Horseback Riding: The Complete Beginner's Guide: All You Need to Know About Horseback Riding Before You Take Lessons!

Charlie Hicks is right on target with his complete guide/manual for the beginning rider. I really appreciate that he addresses the need for a rider and horse to build a relationship based on mutual trust and confidence and this requires mutual respect, rider for horse and horse for rider. I also commend Charlie for his emphasis on safety issues when dealing with an animal which outweighs you, can out muscle you and has an innate flight instinct. He gives the reader - whether a beginning rider or a more experience rider - a good basic explanation of what we as riders need to know about how horses behave and why, that is, the nature of the horse and how they think. This information is extremely important to our understanding of how to best work with our horses in order to have a successful experience. The information he provides about tack options and how they are used and the principles of equitation are clearly and sequentially presented, informative and, happily Charlie's guide is a very enjoyable read. As a horse lover, trainer, rider, and owner of wonderful trail/pleasure horses for over 35 years, I would definitely recommend this guide to anyone who wants to begin riding, return to riding or get another valuable perspective on riding and working with horses.

This was exactly what I was looking for as a brand new rider. Very detailed and super easy to understand.

This is a great book that covers the basics of getting started with horses. A marvelous and intuitive initial section covers how the horse thinks and does what he does. Very, very helpful to the newbie.Brief, concise and a quick read, well worth the time and money.The only downside is the illustrations are grainy, poorly transposed and only marginally useful. A real low point is the final section on types of horses, and it has absolutely no pictures of any of the various breeds.Slipshod illustrations (or lack thereof) aside, a good book and very helpful. I would buy it again.

This is a very well-written book. It is easy to read and understand.It has information for all levels of horsemanship. I have been riding for many years and I found the information in this book very beneficial to my horsemanship knowledge. I am very glad I purchased this book. I am glad I can carry this book around on my Kindle. Great Book.

I am new to riding a horse and have taken lessons for about five months. I bought this book to complement the Western style riding lessons I am taking. I expected more from the book, however it is not expensive and I kept the book. This book does not concentrate on a particular style of riding but gives an overview of various types. It does talk about tacking a horse and all that is needed. Some information my instructor has given in a lesson is in the book and I use the book as a review with my added notes.The drawings are fuzzy and pictures are black and white. This does not help at all especially in Chapter 10: Horse Breeds and Markings. My wife purchased "The Field Guide to Horses" from Amazon for me and that book does a great job about horse breeds, markings, colors and briefly about life cycles. This book has all color pictures but just about different horses.I found "parts of a horse" and "parts of a hoof" along with a saddles with nomenclature on the web better than in "Horseback Riding" Chapters 1 and 2. More drawing and pictures to complement my riding.However, what I found bizarre is the Table of Contents is numbered for chapters and specific items of interest, but not one page in the book has a number on it.If a person was not familiar with riding a horse at all this book will not be that much of a help. The book is not expensive you get what you pay for.

It was concise and factual. Gave good information I was able to use on my first ride.

Excellent book to help understand all of the different facets of horses, their tack and gear, and how to behave around them to foster a safe and enjoyable friendship! Big, easy to read font is easy on the eyes and would be great for audiences both younger and older alike.

This book is pretty simple to read and easily laid out. It's not as full information as I was hoping but it's not badd for the price.

The book is really useful for beginners who learn to ride. It includes all basics beginners have to know such as everything about horse care and riding. There is even information about the features of different horse breeds. The text is easy to read and suitable for children.

it is a basic information book for horse riding

British Rider POV: This seems a full, (basic in the best sense and also includes info i only learnt later in my riding career), account and a useful guide, biased to the american/western rider in some respects but certainly no less useful in my opinion for that. Rather the opposite.I've only read 1/2 and am impressed and interested in the content so far! It provides the bricks for a sound foundation in that it covers most or all aspects one needs to know as one begins to ride. However, I've been riding many years and still found it useful, some bits I wasn't sure of, other parts that linked, the Ah ha - of course!I am thinking of buying the hard copy having read the electronic version. 4 stars is only because I haven't finished reading it so I may be being unfair. 5 stars might be more appropriate.(This is not written by V Hilton but but sister Georgi who used her kindle account!)

I have to say I found this book rather disappointing. It's really the presentation that is of very poor quality, to the extent that it takes a lot from any value the actual writing may have. The front cover is the glossy bit, but the rest looks very much like something somebody just typed out and copied off a very poor quality black and white photocopier. The illustrations are very poor and extremely amateurish, and on ones that have text the text is illegible. The proof reading is dreadful in places. Also, it says on the front, 'Bonus Book Included!' I looked for my bonus book and thought it hadn't been sent to me, and then found the bonus 'book' is the last 12 pages of the book - a few typewritten thoughts on buying your own horse, and really a scam to refer to this as a 'book'. The contents page shows the page number the different chapters and paragraphs are meant to be on, but the actual pages don't even have any numbers. It also seemed ludicrous to have a chapter on 'Horse breeds and markings' which described dozens of horse types without a picture of any of them. Really unusually shoddy in this glossy, hi-tech age.