Book Review: Centered Riding

  I recently read the book Centered Riding, by Sally Swift. There is a countless amount of books out there that teach you all aspects of horsemanship, from riding a variety of disciplines, to riding exercises, to groundwork, and more, and many of them are great. However, Centered Riding is unique in that it focus completely on body awareness and becoming balanced and centered using right-brain techniques. These techniques can apply to all disciplines and every rider, no matter what the experience level. Even very good riders can benefit from these techniques.

 After introducing the concept of centered riding, the author describes what she calls the four basic: soft eyes, breathing, balancing, and centering. When you have soft eyes, your eyes are relaxed and you are aware of your surroundings. Breathing is another important basic, because tension is often caused by the rider holding his/her breath. Short, shallow breaths can also be a cause of tension, so breathing deeply is important. The third basic principle is balance. As most riders know, sitting straight with the ear, shoulder, hip, and heel aligned creates the most balance. The author describes each part that needs to be in alignment as building blocks. If the blocks are not stacked straightly, they will topple over. A jumping position, of course, is different, but you still must be balanced. For this you want the center of your body(more on that soon) over your heels. The final basic is centering.  Your center of balance is the middle of your body, towards where the pelvis is. Centering is being aware of your center of balance and using it to move more in harmony with the horse. This is, of course, what the whole book is about.

Buy on Amazon

 Ultimately, centered riding is about being aware of your body and using the four basics to ride well. The author uses imagery and visualization to help the rider achieve this. For example, she writes that a rider's legs should grow down like tree roots, and that the body should grow tall like a tree. Even just being told in a lesson, "Grow tall like a tree and let your legs grow tree roots," helps me to sit straight and let my legs be long with my heels down. There are plenty more helpful mental images found within the book.

 The bottom-line is, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to improve their riding and take it to a deeper level, no matter what the discipline.

Book Review: A Horse to Treasure

 I recently read A Horse to Treasure, the sequel to Juliana Hutchings' A Horse to Remember. It continues with the same characters, following the teenaged Hilary and her struggles that come after loosing her heart horse, a black mustang named Satan because he was once too aggressive for others to handle. She now has another horse, the son of her heart horse. Throughout the book she struggles with being afraid to show again since she had lost her first after a show. Yet many people try to pressure her into showing because her new horse, who she had trained herself, shows promise and talent. She faced with the tough decision of keeping her horse and not showing, despite what everyone else thinks, or handing the reins over to someone else. There are also many other events involved, including the mysterious showing past of Hilary's best friend, Amanda.

 This book is written for people about my age. I love the story and think it is even better than the first one. It is realistic story about the struggles of the character after losing her horse, something many horse people have likely gone through before. I would recommend it to others about my age.

Book Review: A Horse to Remember by Juliana Hutchings

 I was recently approached by author Juliana Hutchings to write a review on her novel, A Horse to Remember. The story follows a girl named Hilary, a city girl who moves from a big town in Delaware to a small town in Tennessee. Shortly after arriving, she beings working at a nearby stable, where she finds a wild black mustang stallion, named Satan for his aggressiveness, that even experienced horse people where afraid to work with. Hilary notices that the mustang has something in common with herself: he is lonely and out of place, so she soon begins to secretly train the horse. However, she has to keep the training a secret since the horse doesn't belong to her.

 I really enjoyed reading this book! From the moment I started reading, I could hardly put it down. It is a lovely story about the bond that exists between a horse and his rider and the ambitions of a young rider. It has a touching ending.  Amazingly the author was my age when she started writing the book, which is very cool. It was written for someone about my age(early teens), and I would recommend it to others about my age.

Five Day Challenge, Day 2

6. Favorite equestrian book and movie
 I read a lot of books, particularly horse books, so narrowing it down to just one is kind of hard. however, I do really like Beyond the Homestretch, by Lynn Reardon. It's an awesome book that you guys should read some time.

 For movies, my favorite is Secretariat. I enjoyed the movie, which follows Penny Chenery and Secretariat up to the point where Big Red won the Belmont Stakes by a whopping 31 lengths.

 I also like Buck, though it is really a documentary, not a movie.

7. Most common riding misconceptions
 I think this one is supposed to be about what other people think about riding. In that case, a common misconception I hear is, "Riding is easy. The horse does all the work." That kind of annoys me because, as equestrians know, the horse does not do all the work. An equestrian is an athlete.

8. Two riding strengths and one weakness
Strengths
1. I am learning pretty quickly.
2. I sit up straight in the saddle.

Weakness
1. Sometimes I don't keep my head up and look where the horse and I are going.

9. Least favorite thing about horses and/or riding
 The cost is what I don't like. Not only does buying one often cost a lot, but when you include, feeding, boarding, and training, the price goes up even more.

10. What do you feed your horse?
 I don't own a horse yet, but before I get one I'll do my research on what to feed a that particular horse.

The Dressage Chronicles Book Review

 Recently, I read a novel about dressage, called the Dressage Chronicles, written by Karen McGoldrick. It's a great, well-written book, and I would recommend it to any horse lover, even dressage isn't your preferred discipline.

The Dressage Chronicles

 Summary

 The book begins by introducing a college student named Lizzy who is looking for working student job with famous dressage trainer Margot Fanning. She gets hired as a groom, with dressage lessons to boot, and begins her journey in high-level dressage. Throw in a hard to please boss, a cheerful trainer, and hard-working take-charge co-worker, and you get the Dressage Chronicles. Throughout the book, Lizzy and her horse both learn more and more about dressage, and I even learned a little myself.

Why I Like It

 Unlike many other horse novels I have read, this one is very realistic and covers the small parts of horse ownership and showing---grooming, braiding, cleaning tack, putting on polo wraps(however imperfect they were at the beginning), and working hard to take care of horses at shows. I really like how Lizzy comes to Margot as an imperfect rider who had trained her own horse and competed only at the lowest level of dressage. You can really see how she progresses as she experiences life with the pros. 

 All in all, reading the book was an enjoyable, realistic horse experience. Those who show their horses in the arena will probably relate to what happens, and even readers who don't do dressage will understand the hard work of grooming horses. I would recommend this book to all horse lovers looking to read a book about horses that stills covers all the tiny things that only horse owners or those around horses a lot can relate to. Believe me when I say that I would give it a six rating if I could.