101 Horsemanship Exercises, written by Rio Barrett, provides ideas for improving groundwork and ridden skills. Barrett believes a horseman is a person who can bring out the potential of a horse without taking away his dignity through force or mechanical means - and who can argue with that!
Barrett has produced an informative, matter of fact book with easy to follow exercises & simple black and white illustrations. Simple language, short sentences, lots of bullets points, and good clear design make this an easy read and great for dipping in and out of. Each explanation is kept short and sweet with how do I do this?
bullet points, problem solving points and horseman's tip. However don't be fooled by its simplicity - if we all did these exercises with our equines, we'd have much more rounded, well behaved, safer horses and we would be certainly be better horsemen.
While the first half of the book is dedicated to groundwork, the second is dedicated to ridden work. The groundwork will be interesting for anyone, especially people who train horses - so that's all of us then! Good advice for groundwork includes leading, lateral work, walking over and around obstacles. The exercises are useful for in-hand showing and before attempting anything under saddle.
Many of the ridden exercises follow on from the groundwork ones. These exercises are surely good for building a
rapport with your horse and developing confidence and trust between you. I look forward to implementing some of these exercises with my own young horse. This book is very much focussed on natural horsemanship and so Parelli
fans will be familiar with much of the information provided. Critics of natural horsemanship may disapprove - but may well be converted! Negative points include no colour, not printed in the UK and not printed on recycled paper.
This book would be a great read for everyone from novice to intermediate riders, and especially for people training young horses or re-educating old ones.

John Evans
Birmingham University Riding Club