This astounding new book challenges the "rules" of horsemanship in way you have never seen before! You'll discover how to preserve your horse's independence in a "human's world" by becoming more passive, receptive, and accepting, giving your horse the physical and emotional "space" to take an unbelievably active role in your interactions--both work and play. With your support, your horse will develop games and exercises that naturally balance and collect his body, as if by magic. In addition, he will enthusiastically "work with" and "carry" you--"inviting" you along for the ride of your life. The key to this dramatic reconsideration of the human-horse relationship is how inner balance finds outer expression in the body. Whether human or horse, feelings, posture, and movement are inextricably linked. With the ability to "tap into" this language--as explained in the pages of this book--you can leave behind the demands, commands, and cues you once relied on, andinstead discover an unbelievable realm of sophisticated and mutually beneficial symbiosis.

Science based training is not just a way of modifying behavior, but an entire way of living with animals. A solid understanding of our species' natural history helps us best meet their needs and bring out their fullest potential. With an understanding of learning theory and behavioral science we can really begin to influence our companion's choices in the kindest way possible. Positive Reinforcement techniques allow us to develop a strong bond based on mutual understanding, empathy, and compassion. With the help of ethology, biology, and neuroscience, we can better understand how our horses think and feel. Using all this objective, science-based information, as well as our desire to be kinder to horses, we can reshape the horse-human connection. This book dives deep into the sciences behind how horses behave, learn, and feel with many custom designed charts and diagrams for visual learners to enjoy. There are over 70 instructional worksheets for you to apply this information to real life situations and individual equines. In these, we've detailed how to train a wide variety of ground and mounted behaviors as well as how to address emotional and behavioral problems.

Olympic gold-medal-winner Ingrid Klimke was born under a bright star when it came to fulfilling dreams of equestrian greatness. Her father, the renowned Dr. Reiner Klimke, was an Olympic rider himself, and he instilled his principles of training and riding with the good of the horse in mind in his daughter at a young age. Ingrid has furthered her father’s esteemed legacy, modernizing two of the classic works by her father—the bestselling The New Basic Training of the Young Horse and Cavalletti—and tirelessly championing a balanced, fair, and caring system of training the horse that ensures his physical and mental well-being even while preparing him for the very top levels of international competition. And now Ingrid has written a book of her own, detailing her personal system of bringing a horse along through the stages of progressive development, and providing readers guidelines and exercises to ensure success without stress at each milestone. The result is surely a joyful partnership between rider and horse that will go the distance.

"Along with the bear, horses are the primary creatures associated with shamanism and traditions influenced by it. The horse has long been exerting its psychic pressure through the astral realm on our subconscious minds, and it is time for the witch, the warlock, the magician, and all magickal practitioners to embrace its equine magick. This book contains spells, rituals, chants, and meditations for many purposes, loosely based around equine imagery. Numerous traditions are represented, as are many deities including Athena, Epona, and Baba Yaga"--

“A wild, rollicking ride into the heart of horse country—these essays get at what it means to love horses, in all that love's complexity.” —Anton DiSclafani, author of The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls A compelling and provocative essay collection that smashes stereotypes and redefines the meaning of the term “horse girl,” broadening it for women of all cultural backgrounds. As a child, horses consumed Halimah Marcus’ imagination. When she wasn’t around horses she was pretending to be one, cantering on two legs, hands poised to hold invisible reins. To her classmates, girls like Halimah were known as “horse girls,” weird and overzealous, absent from the social worlds of their peers. Decades later, when memes about “horse girl energy,” began appearing across social media—Halimah reluctantly recognized herself. The jokes imagine girls as blinkered as carriage ponies, oblivious to the mockery behind their backs. The stereotypical horse girl is also white, thin, rich, and straight, a daughter of privilege. Yet so many riders don’t fit this narrow, damaging ideal, and relate to horses in profound ways that include ambivalence and regret, as well as unbridled passion and devotion. Featuring some of the most striking voices in contemporary literature—including Carmen Maria Machado, Pulitzer-prize winner Jane Smiley, T Kira Madden, Maggie Shipstead, and Courtney Maum—Horse Girls reframes the iconic bond between girls and horses with the complexity and nuance it deserves. And it showcases powerful emerging voices like Braudie Blais-Billie, on the connection between her Seminole and Quebecois heritage; Sarah Enelow-Snyder, on growing up as a Black barrel racer in central Texas; and Nur Nasreen Ibrahim, on the colonialist influence on horse culture in Pakistan. By turns thought-provoking and personal, Horse Girls reclaims its titular stereotype to ask bold questions about autonomy and desire, privilege and ambition, identity and freedom, and the competing forces of domestication and wildness.

Riding Home:The Power of Horses to Heal, Horse Nation's must read book of 2016, is the first and only book to scientifically and experientially explain why horses have the extraordinary ability to emotionally transform the lives of thousands of men, women and children, whether they are horse lovers, or suffering from deep psychological wounds. It is a book for anyone who wants to experience the joy, wonder, self-awareness and peace of mind that comes from creating a horse/human relationship, and it puts forth and clarifies the principles of today's Natural Horsemanship (or what was once referred to as "Horse Whispering") Everyone knows someone who needs help: a husband, a wife, a partner, a child, a friend, a troubled teenager, a war veteran with PTSD, someone with autism, an addiction, anyone in emotional pain or who has lost their way. Riding Home provides riveting examples of how Equine Therapy has become one of today's most effective cutting-edge methods of healing. Horses help us discover hidden parts of ourselves, whether we're seven or seventy. They model relationships that demonstrate acceptance, kindness, honesty, tolerance, patience, justice, compassion, and forgiveness. Horses cause all of us to become better people, better parents, better partners, and better friends. A horse can be our greatest teacher, for horses have no egos, they never lie, they're never wrong and they manifest unparalleled compassion. It is this amazing power of horses to heal and teach us about ourselves that is accessible to anyone and found in the pages of Tim Hayes's Riding Home. The information and lists of therapeutic and non-therapeutic equine programs, which are contained in the book, are also available at the book's website.

This book will help licensed professional counselors incorporate Equine Assisted Counseling (EAC) into their practices, even those who have little prior experience working with horses. It provides a strong research foundation for understanding the efficacy of equine assisted interventions and the potentially powerful impact that a horse can have in creating a new counseling dynamic. Chapters address using horses to help clients dealing with various traumas and abuse, anxiety, depression, atypical behaviors, and social skills and communication issues. Additionally, a chapter by the internationally renowned "horse whisperer" Pat Parelli offers a look at EAC from the horse’s point of view and demonstrates developing a relationship with a therapy horse in a positive, safe, and respectful manner. Counselors will find this a valuable resource for understanding and utilizing EAC as a new resource in their own practices, as will students seeking to learn about this innovative approach.