Book Review: Light and Easy Dressage by Penny Hillsdon

I bought this book only because I was hanging out the a local Half Price Books store while they were tallying up the total offer on some books that I was selling them. I was in the horse section and then the sports section and was looking at a different dressage book that was more pictures rather than instructional. When I put that one down I saw this one, picked it up to look over, and it just looked friendly enough that I decided to try it out and I'm so glad that I did!

This is probably one of my favorite Dressage books that I've read recently and I read it from cover to cover in about a week.

To start off, let me just say that it's probably not for everyone. It may be a little touchy feely for some of you but for me it was amazing. I'm already a perfectionist and this is something that I ultimately do for fun so the typical language of dressage books can be discouraging to me. Especially when they're talking about flying changes by something like chapter 4-5. It's easy to get the message that if you can't do it perfectly you just shouldn't do it but this book isn't like that at all.

The writer routinely talks about how it's ok to make mistakes as long as you analyze and go back to try again. She talks a lot about the relationship with the horse and about not bullying them or expecting more than they can give. She takes on a very fun, relaxed and comforting tone while still making sure that she makes her point about how certain things are necessary or other things should be avoided at all costs.

I loved that the entire book felt like it was at a level that made sense for me and, while she talks about things like counter canter and shoulder in which is above our pay grade at this point, that means that the whole book was useful while still feeling like there was room to stretch and grow. I actually go so much out of the explanation about canter transitions that I've changed how I'm cueing and have been able to get Katai to take the correct lead about 9 times out of 10 when before, to the right she was only correct about 2 times out of 10.

She makes some great points that I needed to hear about how certain things are like bullying the horse and that, while expecting a quick upward transition is great and will be necessary, when you are starting out you need to give them time to react. This and many other things in the book made me think and gave me things to work on.

I would highly recommend this book for anyone in Intro through maybe somewhere around 1st level and while I think that all riders could gain insight from this book I think it would be most valuable for the lower levels which is what it was really written for.

I would give this book 5 stars out of 5 for the truly encouraging tone, lovely exercises, and fun writing.

Book Review: Nature, Nurture and Horses

Time for my first book review!

 

This book starts out by explaining the concept which is that they are going follow four different horses, of Spanish breeding, through their training journey with the goal of all four horses becoming proficient in Dressage. I bought this book about a year ago when Katai was still quite green. I thought it would be an interesting way of looking at different horse learning styles and would give me ideas for how to adapt my training to fit Katai’s learning style. What was most interesting to me is that with the ability to write about these four different horses, all of the same age and very similar breeding, with the same handlers meant that there were very few external influences. It was extremely interesting to see how each horse reacted to each stage of the training.

 

Each section of the book was broken down into four parts, named after each of the horses and each of these parts followed the horses through different stages in their training beginning with their birth and their initial personality and moving on through the training process.

 

The good: Nature, Nurture and Horses is written more like a really good story than an instructional manual. I found it very easy to read and couldn’t put it down. I bought the Kindle version and read most of it on my iPhone but I’ve looked at the book version and it is beautifully put together with many large, gorgeous, full cover pictures, which are in the Kindle version as well. Since I’m a very visual learner this always helps me figure out the concepts that they are writing about in the book. 

 

This book was excellently designed so that you could either go through and read from start to finish about one horse or compare and contrast as you go through, reading about the different learning styles. I especially found it interesting when they adapt their training with one or two horses to slow down or change the order of things. I also found it really interesting and helpful that they followed a colt and three fillies and had some examples of how the genders can differ.

 

The bad: This is not a training manual. I know I picked up ideas for training Katai, especially when she was young and green, but this is really more good story than instructional.

 

Overall: I would give it 4 carrots out of 5 and would definitely buy it again.