In this book, we will follow these four horses from their birth through their breaking-in, through the first year of training - a span of almost four years. As I started to write this, I had no idea what was coming, so in a way, your moments of emotion as a reader - and mine as I lived the events recorded - don't have the benefit of hindsight. We will be together, in the present.
We will explore the breaking and training system I have used for almost 40 year son hundreds of horses. it is a very old system principally developed in Europe, and I learned it from Europeans. It evolved to prepare the classical dressage horse, but it has been addapted to become a unviersally elementary education for the sport horse of almost any riding discipline.
Now you have a feel for how this book begins. I invite you to see where it ends - how the four horses I bred and saw into the world learn, grow in strength, and mature in mind, and how my own understanding continues to evolve. The young horse, and the emtional and phsycial transitions to which he must adjust in the course of classical dressage training - and quite simply, in 'growing up' - will forever be a complex equitation with many variables and no one 'solution'... just infinite possibility.
Follow along as four young horses - Corsana, Kara, Elsa and Escarpa - leave their babyhood behind and begin their training for future careeers as sport horses, well schooled in the art of classical dressage.
Renowned rider, trainer, author, and equestrian philosopher Paul Belasik shares the daily schedule, weekly events, and his own musings over each horse's character, physicality, athletic ability, and training as the months and seasons pass. Belasik's honest and englightened journal entries give the reader an inside look at training horses according to the classical system he has used for almost 40 years. His style of writing allows the reader to "live" the experiences as he did - in the moment, and without the benefit of hindsight. The result is a true account, both thoughtful and thought-provoking, and by turns tender and efficiently practical.
While many horsemen may have the opportunity to train a young horse in the course of their life, it is only one who both breeds and trains who benefits from working with full and half siblings, horses both closely related and distant. Training horses that share bloodlines, birthplace, and breaking-in techniques enables one to witness the power of nature and the influence of nurture on the eventual result - a "finished" riding horse. Whether that horse is a pleasure to work with and ride, or dull and dispasionate, or worse - a danger to himself and others - is ultimately dependent on the right mixture of nature and nurture, and a sensitive, knowledgeable hand to offer lessons in fair and yet effective measures.
It is this that you witness, in words and photos, in the pages within. Paul Belasik opens his farm and his experience to you, in the hope that his continuing education in the realm of horsemanship can be your own.
Hardback.