My 6 Favorite Books for Connection in Horsemanship

I have always loved learning about horses! Reading what works for others is always helpful so that you can take what you'd like, and leave the rest. Here is a great list of my favorite books to help you better yourself as a horseman or horsewoman. I have read them a few times now and continue to go back and look through them from time to time:

Your Horse Believes In You (LINK HERE)

About the Book: Discover how Inspired Riding™ will make your horse proud! You are about to embark on a journey. Every ride, lesson, and encounter, teaches and shapes us. Horses are parallels to life. The more we get in tune with horses, the more we can understand our lives.

Beth Lauren Parrish, Creator of Inspired Riding™ and Certified Riding Instructor, has experienced the ultimate highs and the deepest lows on her life’s journey. She teaches with the wisdom and care attained from decades of experience. Through impactful stories, lessons and practical tools, she will inspire and guide you towards tremendous happiness with your horse. This book is divided into three parts: Part One: The Inspired Riding™ Way. Practical tools for cultivating clarity, confidence, and connection with your horse. Part Two: All about Beth's life journey with insights to inspire and hopefully help you avoid mishaps! Part Three: Messages for humans from the Inspired Riding™ herd members, told from their perspective.

"If your will for a positive and durable evolution for both yourself and your horse is in your heart, then Beth has all the keys you’ll need to open the right doors for you." -Marija Nielsen "Beth's online teaching and courses have done more for my confidence in 6 months, than several YEARS of in person lessons with other instructors." -Em Tilden "Beth gives you the concrete tools, framed in compassion, to move past your fear and connect deeply with your horse. The Inspired Riding™ Program has been a transformational journey, and I am forever grateful to have found her." -Tamar Reno Allow this book to bring more ease and grace into your life, and with your horses. May the horse be with you. Always.

The Tao of Equus (LINK HERE)

About the Book: Do horses make choices? How do they seem to know what people are thinking and feeling? Are horses spiritual beings with a destiny all their own? If so, how is this destiny connected with humanity's future? How does the equine mind compare with the human mind? What do horses have to teach people? And why are women so attracted to horses?

These are some of the questions writer and equine therapist Linda Kohanov explores in her extraordinary book The Tao of Equus. In it she intertwines the story of the spiritual awakening she experienced with her black mare Rasa with compelling neurological research, cultural history, mythology, and first-hand anecdotes from years of teaching and facilitating equine therapy.

Cowgirls Don't Quit (LINK HERE)

About the Book: It’s spring and time to move the cattle from winter pasture up to their summer range in the Colorado Rockies. Eleven-year-old Meghan is ecstatic to get the opportunity to come along to help on the cattle drive, though her mentor, Ol’ Ben, and her best friend, Xender, warn her that there’s “a lot of work to be done betwixt now and then.” If Meghan can’t ‘cowgirl up’ and help with that work, she won’t be allowed to go. She steps up to the challenge, helping to gather cattle, learning about ear-tagging and banding, and even helping vaccinate the cows.

Then comes the part she’s been looking forward to, with the enjoyable work of keeping the cattle moving along the roads, while watching wildlife and enjoying the tourists’ reactions at seeing a real-life cattle drive. What she doesn’t anticipate are horse wrecks, terrifying rides up mountains, or unscrupulous two-legged varmints.

Author Susan Carpenter Noble grew up as a horse-crazy kid in Central Pennsylvania. She has worked out of various training stables, mostly in Colorado. She has taught riding clinics around the country, written for national horse magazines, and trained state champions in Reining, Western Riding, Hunter Hack, and Working Hunter. She has also coached students to Regional and State Championships in Western Equitation, Trail, Barrel Racing, and Dressage.

Getting in TTouch: Understand and Influence Your Horse's Personality (LINK HERE)

About the Book: The internationally recognized equine expert and creator of the Tellington TTouch tells you how to analyze your horse's physical traits in order to understand and influence his personality. This book shows you how to read your horse's face and body and use that to sense its personality. It goes into depth teaching the TTouch method of massage so that you can connect with your horse on a physical level. 

Linda Tellington-Jones is the co-author of the highly successful The Tellington TTouch, The Tellington-Jones Equine Awareness Method, and Getting in TTouch. She lives in Santa Fe.

The Natural Horse: Foundations for Natural Horsemanship (LINK HERE)

About the Book: Author Jaime Jackson has been a professional farrier and horseman for 22 years. But it was over 10 years ago that he headed alone into America's wild horse country, hoping to find a humane, "natural" model for domestic horse care. Frustrated by the way horses are often mistreated by their owners, Jackson felt much of this resulted from misunderstanding the nature of the horse. What Jackson discovered is that horses do indeed have a natural order, and that knowledge can be applied in truly helpful ways to our domestic horses. In a thoughtful, systematic approach, Jackson lays out his revolutionary ideas about natural horse care in this remarkable book. In the first chapters, the reader steps through wild horse country with Jackson as guide, and is drawn into the nuances of social structure, locomotion and gaits, and the hooves-which Jackson states with authority, "are terribly misunderstood in the domestic horse world." Having armed the reader with a solid foundation of the horse's natural world, Jackson then challenges the reader and nearly every major principle of modern horse care, to "apply what we have learned." The final chapters demonstrate step-by-step what horsemen and horsewomen can and should do.

From hoof care and balanced riding in concert with the horse's natural abilities, to new forms of communication and humane care, The Natural Horse challenges conventional horse care on every front. First published in 1992 and just re-released in a handsome new edition, The Natural Horse is a must for those interested in applying natural methods to the care of their horses.

Natural Horse-Man-Ship: Six Keys to a Natural Horse-Human Relationship (LINK HERE)

About the Book: Internationally known and respected as a horseman and clinician, Pat Parelli has helped thousands of riders understand and communicate with their horses through his Parelli Natural Horse-Man-Ship program. PNH offers riders achievable goals and measurable standards, no matter the discipline - English or western - or the activity - competitive or recreational. Pat's philosophies and concepts are based on a language of trust, leadership and respect, and a special bond between horse and human.

Let me know if you've read any of these, and which one you plan to read next! They are all so great for deepening your horse-human connection and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did! Another trainer I know did a video blog about books that she loves, check that out HERE!! It's really good!