Book Review: Horse Lover’s Daily Companion

 

Horse Lover’s Daily Companion: 365 Days of Tips and Inspiration for Living a Joyful Life with Your Horse, by Audrey Pavia, gives daily devotions a brand-new meaning, at least for horse lovers. Like many traditional devotional books, this one even includes an attached ribbon bookmark.

 The 320-page, hard-cover book is a daily delight for equestrians and horse enthusiasts, from its photo-insert cover to the topical index in the back. Filled with 125 artistic full-color equine photographs (most taken by professional cameraman Tom Sapp), Horse Lover’s Daily Companion: 365 Days of Tips and Inspiration for Living a Joyful Life with Your Horse is a super gift idea for a horse lover.

 Equestrians and horse lovers generally enjoy learning about equines and how to care for them. Horse Lover’s Daily Companion: 365 Days of Tips and Inspiration for Living a Joyful Life with Your Horse overflows with practical and positive ideas for horse management, training and enjoyment.

This book is available on Amazon.

 

 NOTE: Written by this author, this copyrighted material originally appeared on another publisher’s site. That site no longer exists. This author holds all rights to this content. No republication is allowed without permission.

 Author Audrey Pavia has organized Horse Lover’s Daily Companion: 365 Days of Tips and Inspiration for Living a Joyful Life with Your Horse into regular daily categories for a year’s worth of brief, but instructional and inspiring, horse-related readings.

 Monday readings focus on specific breeds of horses: Akhal-Tekes, Andalusians, Appaloosas, Arabians, Cleveland Bays, Connemaras, Fell Ponies, Freesians, Hackneys, Mustangs, Paso Finos, Saddlebreds, Thoroughbreds, Trakehners, Warmbloods and many more.

 Tuesday entries offer information about all sorts of equestrian disciplines, from trail riding to team penning, from cattle drives to mounted treasure hunts and from driving to dressage.

 Wednesday pages detail intriguing facts from horse history. Audrey Pavia has included profiles of famous horses from history and literature, such as Black Beauty, Comanche, Flicka, Idaho Gem, Man o’ War, Napoleon’s Marengo, Sea Biscuit and Xenophon.

 This book reviewer purchased the book described and evaluated here, and the reviewer has no prior or existing relationship (either familial or professional) with the author or publisher.

 Thursday sessions provide helpful how-to’s for smart stabling of horses. Pages spell out advice for horse breeding, caring for horse pastures, catching runaway horses, choosing bits, finding equine insurance, maintaining horseback riding arenas, preventing biting, equestrian tack cleaning, and other horse management concerns.

 Friday writings describe equine health and horse care. Items explain horse acupuncture, arthritis care, chiropractic treatments, dietary concerns, equine influenza, equine strangles, gastric ulcers, horse hoof care, thrush and more.

 Saturday and Sunday sections zero in on ways to foster the horse and human relationship. Audrey Pavia has penned instructions for finding equestrian trainers, great grooming and equine bathing, horse record keeping, in-hand grazing, learning lunging, practicing trailer loading, pre-ride stretching, riding vacations and other equestrian activities.

 Horse Lover’s Daily Companion: 365 Days of Tips and Inspiration for Living a Joyful Life with Your Horse, published by Quarry Books in September 2009, retails for $19.99 ($24.99 in Canada). The book is available from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble.com, Borders.com, Buy.com and other merchants.

 

About the Author: Audrey Pavia

 Audrey Pavia, a former Horse Illustrated editor, is the author of many horse books, including Appaloosa Spirit, Horseback Riding for Dummies, Horse Health & Nutrition for Dummies, Horses for Dummies, Paint Spirit, Trail Riding: A Complete Guide, The Ultimate Horse Lover and Why Do Horses Sleep Standing Up? Audrey Pavia has published articles in Appaloosa Journal, Equestrian Retailer, Equine Veterinary Management, Horses USA, Paint Horse Journal, Quarter Horses USA, Trail Rider, USDF Connection, Western Horseman and elsewhere.

Image: Cover photo – fair use

 

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Book Review: Playing with Lukas

Playing with Lukas: How a Woman and a Horse Found a Private World of Animal Intelligence and Themselves, by Karen Murdock

Who is the world’s smartest horse?

For at least a century, horse lovers have pointed to Jim Key, the clever trick horse of Civil War veteran William Key, D.V.M., as the smartest horse ever. Today, however, a chestnut thoroughbred gelding named Lukas (registered as “Just Ask Mike”), may have challenged Jim Key’s longstanding status for equine intelligence. 

Playing with Lukas, by Karen Murdock, offers an inside look at a remarkable partnership between a human and a horse. Lukas, a discarded retired racehorse, was labeled unmanageable and unfit for jumping, dressage or any other equestrian discipline. With two bowed tendons and an unimpressive racing record, the horse was headed for a most uncertain future.

However, Karen Murdock, a determined horsewoman and former psychiatric nurse, saw a potential in the off-the-track thoroughbred (OTTB) and rescued him. With plenty of time, careful observation, training and patient interaction, Karen Murdock and Lukas actually rescued one another, forming an astonishing alliance through trick training and horse play. The retired racehorse, once deemed distrusting and dangerous, surprised Karen Murdock and the equestrian world with his ability to balance such physical challenges as the passage and Spanish walk with such cognitive achievements as matching colors, shapes and numbers.

In her 2010 book, racehorse rescuer and trainer Karen Murdock outlines this process, sharing her personal experience with her now treasured equine companion. What is Karen Murdock’s secret, as she works with a challenging off-the-track thoroughbred? “A genuine sense of appreciation and enthusiasm go a long way in training – and in life,” she writes. Perhaps herein lies a lesson for us all.

Karen Murdock’s book, which began as a collection of training tips, actually offers more of a personal memoir. The opening pages of Playing with Lukas, by Karen Murdock, include dozens of quotations and endorsements from diverse equestrian leaders and animal lovers. Playing with Lukas is filled with personal anecdotes and memorable musings from the author, who traces her seven-year initial relationship with Lukas, as he learned to trust her and to perform far beyond anyone’s expectations.

“When your training is correct,” Karen Murdock says, “the tricks are only a by-product and happen in an almost effortless, uncalculated way.” The author confesses that she does not even own a horse whip.

Included in Playing with Lukas, by Karen Murdock, is plenty of the author’s own biography, setting the stage for her compassionate friendship with her special rescue horse. With a difficult childhood and few long-term relationships, the author’s own personal transformation of trust is as amazing as that of her beloved Lukas.

Early in her story, Karen Murdock pens this most telling statement about Lukas, her equine companion and project: “I now knew that I wouldn’t give up on him the way I had been cast off. I was determined to find a way through.”

Available in paperback and Kindle formats, Playing with Lukas is an intriguing and heart-warming read for anyone who loves horses or simply a feel-good story. The book displays penetrating insights into the possibilities of human-to-animal friendships. Could it be that animals (such as horses) are smarter than humans may have suspected?

The author’s technical training tips may prove useful to equestrians. Many horseback riding enthusiasts may be surprised to discover how much of the horse training and equestrian recreation may occur on the ground, rather than under saddle. What’s more, Karen Murdock’s transparent tracing of her own personal development make Playing with Lukas a gripping read, filled with hope and potential.

Reviewer’s Note:

This book reviewer received a complimentary copy of the book described and evaluated here, although the reviewer has no prior or existing relationship (either familial or professional) with the author or publisher.

Lukas quickly became a darling of the equestrian world, thanks to owner/trainer/author Karen Murdock and her compassionate network of horse-lovers. Major media outlets (such as ABC, CBS, CNN, HLN, NBC and RFD), major media (such as the Associated Press, American Horse Publications, Blood Horse Magazine, The Mane Point and The Horse) and internet sites (such as EquiSearch and Equine Connection) have featured Karen Murdock and Lukas, tagging him the world’s smartest horse.

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What happens to racehorses, once they are no longer fit to race? Beyond the Homestretch, by Lynn Reardon, traces the development of a racehorse rescue program. Beyond the Homestretch is a worthy read for anyone who loves horses.

Credit: Beyond the Homestretch: What I've Learned from Saving Racehorses, by Lynn Reardon  |  © Cover photo from press packet

About the Author: Karen Murdock

Karen Murdock, author of Playing with Lukas, is a retired nurse who has spent more than three decades working with difficult horses. Throughout her equine experience, Karen Murdock has employed clicker training, liberty exercises and positive reinforcement to build confidence and willing compliance with her horses. Karen Murdock is based in Walnut, California.

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Book Review: Half-Broke Horses

A True-Life Novel, by Jeannette Walls

Chalk up another bestseller from Jeannette Walls. Half-Broke Horses, although not exactly a prequel to Jeannette Walls’ best-selling book, The Glass House, does flesh out her family history dramatically.

Overview of Half-Broke Horses

Jeannette Walls’ Half-Broke Horses is not wholly a horse story. Instead, it is an intriguing account of the life of the author’s own grandmother, Lily Casey Smith (told in first-person narrative, from Lily’s point of view).

The story starts in a whirlwind and leads readers through one storm after another in the life of daring and undaunted Lily Casey Smith throughout the first half of the 20^th Century in the American West.

Half-Broke Horses follows Lily through her childhood, youth and adult years, as she learns to break horses, dance, teach school, drive a car, run a cattle ranch and even fly an airplane. Lily lived through tornadoes and tragedies, floods and droughts, divorce and delight. She fought back against bigotry and biases, with her spirited determination.

Even as a child, Lily Casey Smith had a strong sense of herself and a fiery forcefulness that propelled her forward.

“’Life would be easier,’ Dad kept saying, ‘once we got our due. But we were only going to get it by fighting for it,’” writes Jeannette Walls, in Half-Broke Horses (p. 13).

The bulk of the story is factual, according to the author. However, because Jeannette Walls admits that she added details and dialogue, she labeled the fictionalized account a true-life novel, rather than a biography of her grandmother.

Jeannette Walls’ narrative, as her grandmother might have told it, even includes the author herself (as a child) and the hint that young Jeannette might grow up with a similar spirit to that within the indomitable and perhaps legendary Lily Casey Smith.

Half-Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls, comes in clothbound and paperback volumes. (The book is also available in large-print, compact disc, Kindle, MP3, and e-book versions.) Tagged by the author as a true-life novel, Half-Broke Horses was listed as one of The New York Times Book Review’s “Top Books of 2009” and Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Nonfiction (2009). The book was also a New York Times best-seller.

Fiction lovers, (particularly American history buffs), both young and old, will likely enjoy Half-Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls. This is no romantic rendering of the American pioneers or the women of the Wild West. Instead, this is a fresh and feisty recounting of the life of a gutsy and adventurous can-do individual, who found and forged her way in often difficult conditions.

About the Author: Jeannette Walls

Based in New York City, Jeannette Walls is a career journalist, an MSNBC contributor, and an author. Her additional published books include The Silver Star and Dish: How Gossip Became the News and the News Became Just Another Show.

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Book Review: Bubba to the Rescue

A horse novel for preteens by Jennifer Walker

Arabian Horses are occasionally tagged stereotypically as fiery, but these intelligent and highly trainable equines may also demonstrate excellent athleticism and loyalty, as author Jennifer Walker portrays in her latest Green Meadow Series.

Bubba to the Rescue, Walker’s second installment in the young horse lover collection, hits the ground running with a story that sweeps readers up in its path. The 2011-published book opens with the wedding of the father of the protagonist, teen equestrienne Leslie Clark, and her horse trainer/barn manager, Helen Green. The happy couple fell in love in Walker’s first Green Meadow book, Bubba Goes National, also published in 2011.

Next, the tale hits the trail, as a casual ride is transformed in a few hoof beats into a fire-rescue adventure. Riding with pony pal Alex, Leslie discovers a seemingly abandoned horse in the woods after the two teens have saved a neighbor’s horse herd from a barn blaze. Fittingly, the girls name the mysterious equine Spark.

As the story unfolds, Leslie attempts to find Spark’s real owner, while helping her friends cope with such challenging real-life issues as injured animal care, teen romance, abusive relationships, death and grieving, financial responsibility, stepfamily relationships, and more.

The title focuses on Clark’s Arabian gelding Lucky (or Bubba), which the teen rider purchased at auction in the first book. But Walker’s plotline focuses much more on Clark, her family, her friends, and the strange new horse known as Spark. With each page turn, readers are left to wonder when Bubba will enter the story again.

Reviewer’s Note:

This book reviewer received a complimentary copy of the book described and evaluated here, although the reviewer has no prior or existing relationship (either familial or professional) with the author or publisher.

Walker’s Bubba to the Rescue is penned for young teen readers, but the story may appeal to older horse-loving readers as well. Although this book is a sequel, per se, the story also stands alone for readers who may have missed the first book.

Published by Twin Trinity Media, Bubba to the Rescue includes several drawings by illustrator Debra Torrico, who created the cover art for the book. Torrico also illustrated Bubba Goes National.

About the Author: Jennifer Walker

Horse lover Jennifer Walker is the author of Bubba to the Rescue, Bubba Goes National, and Leslie and the Lion. Her articles have appeared in Arabian Horse Times, Horseman’s News, Modern Arabian Horse and Sierra Style. Jennifer Walker has published short stories in Elements of the Soul and The Ultimate Horse Lover.

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