Customer Reviews

The Horse

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book was recommended to me when I was attending college for Equine Studies. The book is great! A must for those who wish to know more indepth about the care of horses. Not for the novice. It was so nice to read a book that didn't spend most of the chapters on grooming and mounting. You won't find that here. The four authors are some of the best horsemen in the business and Anthony Borton was one of my professors. I highly recommend this book to anyone taking any Equine studies or anyone who wants to learn more than just the basics. (from physiology to genetics to feeding, etc.)

This book is on the approved review list for 4-H Hippology and Horse Bowl in New York State. It is an excellent source for reference for breeds, colors, feeding, anatomy, barn construction and management. It also offers an excellent source for learning about horse behavior, which is helpful to owners and trainers. It is an "adult" format and not geared for young readers. An must have addition for any horse library!

Very thorough and informative text book. Has everything from calculating inbreeding relationships to nutrition to leg disorders and foal care. Used for my University class. Precise and easy to comprehend.

I originally used this book as a college text, and now keep it in my library. The level of detail across a wide range of subjects (from hoof care to nutrition to parturition) is quite good. I can now look up all the obscure horse facts/details that I once knew by rote. It's worth the money.

The Horse is an excellent resource book that covers a number of important topics. The book is easy to read for the novice and should have a place on every horseman's bookshelf.

I was first introduced to this book 20 years ago while a student of Dr Evans at UC Davis. Its the only text from college that I still reference. The information is informative, reliable and accurate. I strongly recommend this book for every horseowner from the novice backyard owner to the experienced showman.

Horses have been part of human life for thousands of years and this solid reference, first published in 1976 and revised in 1990, remains one of the most reliable reference books available to the serious horseman.

It has an excellent section on different breeds in America and the sections on anatomy, confirmation, colors and the inheritance of color are both mesmerizing and as useful today as they were when the book was newly published. This is still the first book I reach for when I need to look up a disease as the descriptions are clear and comprehensive. Sometimes the remedies have changed or improved. And this book was published before the "Impressive syndrome" or HYPP condition was discovered in Quarter Horses.

Section 3 on Nutrition and digestion is one area where there has been a wealth of later studies, but the authors are generally sound in their recommendations. They repeat some "old wives tales" such as the prohibition on giving water to a hot horse. But to show that the authors generally "get it right" one can point to their recommendation that drinking water for horses should be in a range from 45F to 65F. A later study established with much effort that horses prefer their drinking water around 60F. This is a good detail to know when dealing with a sick horse on a cold day but for general purposes THE HORSE (second edition) is good enough.

Likewise the advice in chapter 20 regarding fences, stalls and construction is an excellent starting point. Understanding this chapter will help the new owner of a horse farm avoid some expensive mistakes.

One area where this reference is badly dated is in the behavior and training sections. Here I would recommend the works of John Lyons, Linda Tellington-Jones, Pat Parelli or some other practitioner of the natural horsemanship movement which although it seems to be "New Age" in method is actually an attempt to teach "city people" techniques and sensitivities that were well known to our ancestors who worked closely with their horses.

Likewise, many of the management techniques in the breeding section are followed on Thoroughbred horse farms and create lower conception rates in the mares and produce poorly socialized horses that do poorly when turned out in normal herd situations. However, a perusal of these chapters should be usefully discouraging to the owner of a single mare who thinks that breeding her would be a nice, profitable hobby!

What makes this book so indispensable is the collection of diverse equine disciplines and areas of expertise all under one cover; the whole becomes more than a sum of the separate parts. No other reference covers breeds, colors, anatomy, confirmation, horseshoes, parasites, diseases and management practices and does so with some attempt at depth. Even if one area is dated, the dedicated horse owner should be able to supply the deficiency by checking in a periodical or a more recent and narrower publication. The horse has not changed that much in domestication and the general "horse sense" of this reference continues to advise and inform humans who aspire to horsemanship.

This is a great overall book on horses. However, the section on how horses actually move is really lacking. It does a good job discussing the basic walk, trot, pace, canter, gallop, but then says anything else is "artificial." "Any other gaits are caused by chains, chemicals, and shoeing practices". I have a completely barefoot Tennessee Walker trail horse that has some lateral gears that are not covered by this book at all.

They sent the book in like new condition. I got what I paid for and would buy from them again.

book was in great shape. the book is a very high level horse science book. wife and kids use it to finish 4-h horse project level testing. they are also interested in horse science for future use. thanks