Mark Rashid's New Book

When I first learned of Mark Rashid, an American horse trainer from Colorado, I was standing in what was back then, a Borders bookstore, thumbing through his new book, Horses Never Lie - The Heart of Passive Leadership. I have been a fan of his warm, conversational style ever since.  

Late last year, Mark published a new book, For the Love of the Horse-Looking Back, Looking Forward, which acknowledges and expands upon the groundbreaking success of his first book, Considering the Horse. So much of what we know and do for horses has changed over the past 30 years, as has Mark's philosophy and training methods, thanks to the many horses he has personally worked with. Mark's new book addresses many of these changes, in order to help us become better horsemen and caregivers to our horses today, as well as tomorrow.

There's a chapter in the book called "New Revelations" which surprised me, profoundly so. I wasn't expecting a discussion about the consequences of inbreeding and looking back, I guess this is the reason for the "New" in "New Revelations". Mark opens the chapter with a story from his very early days, of a friend who had purchased a well-bred colt that she had been trying to start. However, she had become a little frustrated, as the colt did not retain anything he had learned. He also seemed to experience coordination issues when cantering. Additionally, he had begun to show aggressive behavior, unprovoked. She was looking for Mark's guidance, in case there was something that she was missing. In the pages that follow, Mark tells us of other horses brought to him over the years with similar issues. An article about the impact that inbreeding was having on purebred dogs (same issues he was seeing with horses), caught Mark's attention and set him on a course of exploration and discovery.  In the 40 years since working with his friend's colt, Mark has seen hundreds of horses with similar issues, for example, he mentions the PMU foals (the foals who were produced for the collection of the urine of their pregnant dams for use in the manufacturing of Premarin), who by the mid-90's had matured into adult horses, transitioning into riding careers. The chapter closes with a conversation between Mark and Dr. Steve Peters, the author (with Martin Black) of Evidence Based Horsemanship.  It's a powerfully informative chapter and in the three weeks since I finished reading the book, I have re-read this chapter multiple times. That's what I enjoy the most about Mark's books. The learning doesn't just happen while you are reading, learning continues for days, weeks, months, even years later, as you continue thinking upon all that you have read.