Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I'm not a fan of Rashid's books because I'm an "If you do A, then you get B" type of rider, looking for concise instruction (and always lost when I don't get the expected results!). Rashid's method of telling you "how to" with a story has always frustrated me - up until this book.
In "Whole Heart, Whole Horse" Rashid puts into words many "how to's" that other clinicians and instructors say but never explain. For example, how the rider can learn to bring up their energy - or why they should bring it down. His chapter on balancing (emotions and energy) is excellent and, like almost all of the chapters, has been bookmarked by me to read again and again.
If you want to just be a rider, this isn't the book for you. However, if you want to be a horseman, you need to own this book.
Click Here to see more reviews about: Whole Heart, Whole Horse: Building Trust Between Horse and Rider
Many horse trainers, even those who espouse the so-called natural horsemanship approach, take the position that horses who fail to obey a human's request are doing so as much out of perversity as ignorance. That's not Mark Rashid's view. In his words, "If we understand that horses can't separate the way they feel from the way they act, then we can start to see that unwanted behavior isn't bad behavior at all. More times than not, it's just the horse expressing the way he feels at that particular moment in time. . . .How we perceive that information dictates how we respond to it."Whole Heart, Whole Horse focuses on this idea, covering such subjects as gathering information from the horse, turning rider/trainer mistakes into positive experiences, developing realistic boundaries between you and your horse, understanding how and why horses release energy from real or perceived traumas, and reaching a comfortable balance point between horse and rider. Rashid analyzes developing softness, consistency, dependability, trust, and peace of mind in both horses and humans, as well as how to become a leader whom your horse will willingly want to follow and work with. Full of examples that extend beyond the training pen, Whole Heart, Whole Horse offers good sense and information that will make you a more astute, capable, and sensitive horseman and person.
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