Book Review: Teach Your Horse Perfect Manners: How You Should Behave so Your Horse Does Too by Kelly Marks

Teach Your Horse Perfect Manners: How You Should Behave So Your Horse Does Too by Kelly Marks. Trafalgar Square Publishing, 2002, Hardbound 224 pages

Kelly Marks is a disciple of Monty Roberts. We all know Monty from the Horse Whisperer books and from his experience taming "Shy Boy" the wild mustang.

Marks does use some of the same techniques that Roberts uses such as Join Up but where she differs, seems to be where her "motherhood" instincts kick in. She treats her horses more like human children and expects them to behave in a civilized manner. Horses, just like children, according to Marks, need to be educated as to "the rules" of good manners and cannot be expected to know what constitutes acceptable behavior from a human perspective. Marks says that people must learn to communicate with horses through eye contact and body language as that's the language they use themselves to communicate with each other.

Using her easy-to-follow text and illustrations, she shows us how to do her foundation exercises and ground work training. She also explains the philosophy behind why such training works and how we can use these exercises to not only teach our non-problem horses perfect manners but how we can use them to help with specific problems such as catching, biting, pawing, refusing to stand, head-shyness, aggression and refusing to load. She is considerate and consistent just as we would be with our own children.

Marks language is easy to read and understand and she offers lots of "case scenarios" that are extremely educational and very entertaining. Instead of having to take this book little by little and digest it a bit at a time, I was able to easily read and understand the concepts presented. I have read the book several times and have gone back to use it as a reference in training my own horses. So far, I have had a great deal of success with her techniques. My horses seem calmer and I have a more relaxed attitude in my training method. This book is definitely worth the money.