Train your horse to embrace a life around humans. Focusing on developing the skills vital for every domesticated horse, this guide stresses the importance of creating an atmosphere where both trainer and horse can overcome fear and cultivate mutual respect. With a series of tests to gauge your horse’s knowledge and training exercises to enrich and strengthen your horse’s comfort around people, you can increase attentiveness, boost confidence, and help your horse reach his full potential.
As a novice equine owner I sought to understand our newly adopted and abused horse/pony better. I found this book very helpful on the psychological side of things.
Positives: She is right in that every horse should know the things listed in the book. Decent explanations and rationalizations. Lots of full colour photos and text. Good for riders who want to polish off training or get ideas in what other things their horse should do.
Negatives: Makes assumptions that the owner will know how to train these things into a horse. Doesn't mention that buying a horse who knows these things requires consistent proactive maintenance. In other words, the owner must be proactive in training and discipline or the horse will inevitably stop doing them.
This is a very great book that gives you the basic things that every horse should know. I really liked how throughout the book it showed pictures as well as gave little tests at the end of each chapter to see if your horse could pass it. I really liked the part when it talked about all of the little, and often unexpected things that horses can spook at. It showed how to go about desentizing them to these things. This was a great addition to the book. If you are a horse owner, this is definitely a book to read for a safe and confident horse. I found it at the Norfolk Library.
Thought there would be more how-to advice. I guess I like Clinton Anderson and John Lyons better for instruction and guidance. She gives a list of things all horses should know but doesn't do a very good job of explaining how to get from A to B.
An excellent check up for those who have some knowledge. Cherry does not go into detail about how to achieve goals. She speaks more on how to prevent issues. She stress basics and patience and knowing the horse. This book is full of pictures and I found it helpful.
What Every Horse Should Know is a comprehensive guild every horse owner should have on their shelves! Cherry Hill lays out simple but important facts and information in this amazing book. Highly recommend!