Building on the concept of his previous books – Considering the Horse and A Good Horse is Never a Bad Colour, Rashid clearly defines the difference between alpha and passive leaders. He explains how to become a passive leader (leading by example rather than force) and illustrates with compelling stories how horses change from being indifferent or unwilling participants to becoming enthusiastic partners with their owners.
As he did in his other books, Rashid writes about his experiences with real horses, always featuring his sense of humour and overriding compassion for the horse. His instructive anecdotes reach back to when he was a youngster under the mentorship of “the old man”, and continue to his experiences today as a horse trainer and a popular clinician who has travelled the world to teach his remarkably effective methods of natural horsemanship.
This book talks a lot about developing a ‘feel’ for the horse and the essence of this is summed up in a letter written to Rashid by one of his students…Here is an excerpt from that letter;
” Overall, I feel like I’m just trying to rediscover the connections I had with horses when I was a kid and I rode by the seat of my pants and didn’t ‘know’ anything.”
“I think I was riding with my heart and not my head back then. I was basing pretty much everything on feel because that’s all I had. If I got too cocky, my horse would ‘remind’ me to pay attention to the feel. Somehow I lost touch with that.”
“I have always had a habit of discounting my accomplishments or losing sight of them completely. Instead, I tend to put all the emphasis on the things yet to be learned or the ‘problems’. That puts a lot of pressure on me and my horse. Its awful to fall into the role of nitpicking and nagging the horse, slipping into the ‘problem solving’ mode – looking for the mistakes, so I could set out working on fixing them.”
“I now know I could have done a better job of acknowledging all the great things my horse and I were doing and spent less time focusing on what we weren’t doing or what I thought we needed to do better. I’m not saying that I think goals are bad. They can give direction and purpose. But the problem I see with being too goal oriented is that it can be awfully easy to lose sight of the moment, to become so focused on the destination that you miss the journey.”
This book is available through the internet – www.markrashid.com.
