Adopted from a huge box of horsey books going begging at the stables.

I was pleasantly surprised by how good this book was. The author is not someone that I have heard off, being based in America, and the books deals with a lot of Western ridden technique, but it was clearly written, was illustrated well and dealt with a lot of the basics that a rider needs to know before becoming a good rider. A lot of teh first chapters dealt with posture, balance and the way in which a rider needs to sit on the horse, and why this should be as it is. There were plenty of excellent exercises to help correct problems and I picked up numerous tips along the way. The rest of the book was about how to influence the horse and when, how to develop that illusive 'feel' and where to start looking when things go wrong. A fab read, glad I picked it up.