Books We Have Learned From

Every once in a while I will share some information about horses that has been particularly helpful for us. There's no question that experience on horses, especially in the company of better riders than us, has been the greatest teacher. However, there have been several books over the years that have been good teachers as well as good reads.

Without question, the books we have enjoyed the most and learned the most from are by a horse trainer named Mark Rashid who lives in Estes Park, Colorado.

His first book, "Considering the Horse" was the first book of his that we read. Unlike a lot of books written by horse trainers, Mark's books are good stories. His first couple of books tell about his experiences as a young boy when he worked with "the old man," a horse trainer by the name of Walter Pruett, and the lessons he learned from him. The most basic lesson he learned (and we learned from Mark) is to look at situations from the horse's perspective before deciding what to do next. I rarely read books more than once, but I have read this book at least three times and probably will read it again several more times.

His second book was "A Good Horse is Never a Bad Color" in which he continued his stories about his experiences with "the old man." He learned that buying a horse because of how he/she looks is never a good idea. He learned to evaluate a horse from the hooves up. If the feet are not good, then no matter how the horse looks it will not be a good horse.

His third book, "Horses Never Lie" helped us to learn that what you see in horses is what you get. They don't know how to lie or be deceitful. They don't play games with you. We have learned that we can learn a lot about ourselves from what our horses tell us. We know now that when something is not working with our horses, we look to ourselves first to see what we can do different. Our basic assumption for Gletta and Morgunn is they are always trying to do what they think we want and, if what they're doing is not what we want, then we're not communicating well enough.

We have read all his books now and learned something from each of them.

"Life Lessons from a Ranch Horse"

"Horsemanship Through Life"


"Big Horses, Good Dogs, Straight Fences"




If you want a good read and perhaps learn something about horses along the way, then we highly recommend Mark Rashid's books.