Horse & Rider Gear

Reviews

Cherry Hill is a wonderfully clear writer, putting you at ease as you go through her book on horse behavior. As a non-horse person (lifelong city life), but a writer of westerns, she has helped me to write confidently about horses in my own stories. I have read other books where the pictures were better than the writing. Cherry's writing is just as good as the many great pictures in the book. You cannot go wrong with this book. I will be hunting for her other books on horses, too, now that I know what a good writer she is. Kathleen Pacheco Elizabeth, NJ KPacheco2@AOL.com

Good information, solid, sensible, down to earth,excellent drawings and photos. A little short, lots of additional information required before one engages the practice. It is an excellent primer on the subject, but should be preliminary to purchasing a horse and beginning such a lifestyle change.

A MUST read for every horse owner, caretaker, trainer, etc., old and new! This book gets you to where you have always wanted to be with your horse, FAST! This book is excellent for learning how to read, communicate, understand and care for your horse. I bought a lot of books before I found this one. I wish I found this one first.

Just like his other books, this book is great. I love horse books that you can truly get wisdom for your life and for your horses.

Cherry Hill has produced yet another trade paperback which is very difficult to summarize or critique due to the inherent contradictions that appear throughout, and the absence of a clear thesis or theme for the work. Ostensibly, the book purports to describe the horse's mental world and cognitive functions. But the title seems at odds with the thrust of the content; and in fact, there is very little empirical information as to exactly "why" horses do what they do (she admits to a reliance on anecdotal 'evidence' drawn exclusively from her own experiences; indeed, the bibliography lists only her own publications). The title leads one to believe that Hill is going to translate the equine view of the world into terms that humans can understand and use to communicate with their equine partners. However, the central tenet upon which Hill bases her description is that horses function in accordance with an exclusively behavioralist model (a la` B. F. Skinner, a modality outdated and at present rejected by most of the professional psychological community). She states in Chapter 9, "Learning," that "horses are not ranked highly as problem solvers," (pg. 127); and again in the same chapter, "as horses learn they don't reason, they react." She is actually describing the horse's mental world as not mental at all, but linear, exclusively instinctive and limited to responses to stimulus presented to them by their environments. First of all, anyone who has watched a horse undo a stall latch, take off a blanket or fly mask, feign fear, or cut corners in a riding arena to save themselves some steps is fully aware of the problem solving ability of even the most lackadaisical horse. Hill discusses the ability of horses to anticipate cues or requests, or events such as feeding time but denies that this is a form of reasoning. Nor does she take into account some of the latest field research which is finding innovative ways to test the finer points of equine cognitive abilities (cf. publications by Dr. Katherine Houpt, Director, Animal Behavior Institute, Cornell Veterinary College; and the full body of work by Dr. Evelyn Hanggi, Equine Research Foundation, Aptos, California). Less than innocuous is Hill's brief and misleading discussion of appropriate punishment of horses for "bad" behavior (pgs. 141-142). As if her claim that horses in a herd, left to their own devices, "punish" each other is not misleading enough, Hill further states that "punishment" is a part of "natural" horse training (one presumes she is referring to the 'natural' horsemanship of a John Lyons or Monty Roberts?), which is clear misstatement, and worse, gives license to frustrated riders or owners to vent their anger on horses. Punishment is defined as the imposition of a penalty for the perpetration of some fault or offense. To comprehend deeply the equine mind/spirit is to attempt to access an entity totally 'other,' an alterity that does not, can not, subscribe to human notions of fault or immorality or social obligation. To presume otherwise smacks of extreme anthropocentrism, the very world view the true horseman should be working to overcome. There are so many negative criticisms one could make of Hill's most recent publication - there simply isn't time or space. If such works were simply cluttering up bookshelves in tack shops and bookstores, there would be no cause for comment. But apparently unsuspecting neophytes in the horse world believe they are duly informed about horses after reading this book and others like it. Hence the perpetuation of misconceptions, myths, and fabrications that have caused untold suffering within the realm of the domesticated horse.