Customer Reviews

The Revolution in Horsemanship: And What It Means to Mankind

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Leaving what you know, and struggling to find a better approach is not easy. To do so while trying to engage a large, wild-eyed equine can really undermine your confidence.

The authors of "The Revolution in Horsemanship" are uniquely qualified to be our guides, and they do an excellent job. Miller and Lamb map the progression of the shift in horse training over the past 25 years, and then fit it into the context of classical training over hundreds of years.

They understand that this may be the best way ever to teach the elusive "feel" that inspires the magic of harmony and cooperation. Extensive discussion of horse behavior is presented, including how it is critical to training success.

They credit and weave together the many approaches of the popular clinicians, and recognize the most important idea, the real value of this training work, which is best explained by them:(Quoting from the book) "Perhaps this is the reason that this revolution occurred. To hand us a powerful tool for developing the rest of our humanity, the part that wasn't genetically endowed, the part that, in fact, goes against our genetically endowed, predatorial instincts. The part we have to work to obtain and is therefore most valuable to us."

I am getting this book into the hands of my students and my friends, as "doing the work" will benefit our horses and ultimately our entire community. It's a wonderfully written overview, filled with insight and intelligence.

Many thanks to Dr. Miller and Rick Lamb.

This book should be considered a primer for people wishing to finally understand the sequence of events in popular horse training, both current, and the recent and not so recent past. Say what you will about the marketing Savvy® of certain successful trainers, even they willingly give credit where it is due when it comes to recognizing the contributions of the "horse's lawyer" Tom Dorrance and his more talkative successor Ray Hunt. This book puts them all in order and gives an overview of the successive styles of horse behavioral modification systems. The authors also give a short exploration of traditional and non-traditional tack highlighting the why's as they go. This book should be considered a textbook for anyone wishing an organized insight into the riding aspects of equine training.

A very interesting history of the Natural Horsemanship 'movement'. The books works it's way through an overview and then looks at a large number of the most well known proponents.

I think that the title was much grander than the content. The content of course only looked at NH or perhaps what should be more correctly called cowboy horsemanship. Although, this has indeed been a very significant change in horse training in recent times, there was no effort in the book to look outside of the US.

For instance, no information on positive reinforcement, the re-emergence of 'classical dressage' or the european contributions to horsemanship. There was also no real discussion about how the general increase in availability of knowledge has made people more aware of issues and training techniques nor information on the scientific research into animal intelligence and learning that is making changes to our views on animals and horses and driving this search for 'new' methods.

The most interesting aspect of the book was perhaps the history of the trainers themselves vs their 'marketing'. Fascinating to see how so many people with little or no horse knowledge can suddenly invent themselves as gurus...

For anyone curious about the latest "Natural Horsemanship" training methods, this book is for you. There are as many different ways to appraoch this method as there are clinitions to teach it. They each have their own interpretation and means of relaying their training ideas. This book explains the conception of "Natural Horsemanship", as well as introduce the reader to many of it's practitioners, how they became involved with it, and their slight differences of interpretation.

This was one of the best books I have read in a long time. It really covers ground. It is educational, very well researched and written with such knowledge and passion that even the chapters that from the title seemed like "the same old stuff" , were interesting. I could not put it down!!
I bought extra ones to give as holiday gifts for my friends and they too loved it, whether they were interested in horses or not.
This book is an interesting and refreshing new point of view, that will help people to understand the prey/ predator relationship between horse and a human seeing it though the horses eyes. It is a journey through the history of the horse and a human as partners which offers hope for horses today, but more so makes the reader realise how much hope the horse today offers people all over the world.
A book you can go back to and read over and over, each time getting more out of it.

Even though I have followed the Parelli's method of relationship building with my horses, I am always adding to my knowledge. I really enjoyed the part where Dr. Miller profiles several different professionals and explains their backgrounds and training methods. Unfortunatley the old school methods of abuse and torture training are still around, but as more and more people are exposed to this gentle idea, I hope we can redeem ourselves in the eyes of these Regal creatures.

of mine who had "discovered" natural horsemanship. Anyone interested in or thinking about changing their approach to horses or searching for a more solid understanding of them would benefit from this book. It helps the reader see horsemanship as a way of life, as an approach to life from the perspective of those who have made their life with horses. It helps define horsemanship as a skill rather than a discipline or new trend. I found it to be well written, well rounded, and thoroughly researched. An excellent read for those looking to understand the meaning and roots of horsemanship and it's evolution to present day.

I gave a copy of this book to a horse trainer that was so hard on my horses that I had to get mad and take them home after seeing that they made my four year old filly lame. This book is wonderful and very Informative on the consepts of nonviolent training of horses. The fact that there are different ways to get the same results in training without becoming violent or harming to the horse. I love my horse's horsonalities and some trainers just want to make zombies out of horses. This is a great book !

Great information on past and present horsemanship. Interesting info on history of this craft. I enjoyed a brief biography of several present day clinicians.

The Revolution in Horsemanship: And What It Means to Mankind
I find all of Mr. Miller's books very good. All of them worth reading. There are easy to read, easy to understand. I recommend for those who wants to know more about horses and techniques Mr. Miller experienced. But there are things that helpes people too in their everyday life.