Nature, Nurture, and Horses

In the spring and summer of 2007 four horses were born...

In this book, we will follow these four horses from their birth through their breaking-in, through the first year of training - a span of almost four years. As I started to write this, I had no idea what was comming, so in a way, your moments of emotion as a reader - and mine as I lived the events recorded - don't have the benefit of hindsight. We will be together, in the present.

We will explore the breaking and training system I have used for almost 40 years on hundreds of horses. It is a very old system principally developed in Europe, and I learned it from Europeans. It evolved to prepare the classical dressage horse, but it has been adapted to become a universally elementary education for the sport horse of almost any riding discipline.

Now you have a feel for how this book begins. I invite you to see where it ends - how the four horses I bred and saw into the world learn, grow in strength, and mature in mind, and how my own understanding continues to evolve. The young horse, and the emotional and physical transitions to which he must adjust in the course of classical dressage training - and quite simply, in 'growing up' - will forever be a complex equation with many variables and no one 'solution' ... just infinite possiblity.