Island views

Ever since I read “Horses never lies”, Mark Rashid has been my favourite horse writer. Not only is he obviously a brilliant horseman, he is also an excellent story teller and a great teacher, skillfully sharing memories of his life with horses to illustrate particular points of horsemanship. His straight forward but insightful writing style is a delight and make his books so easy to read that I always have trouble putting them down and usually end up reading them from cover to cover in a very short time.

In short, I am a fan, and have been collecting his books much as I use to collect albums from my favourite pop stars in my teens :0

In this book, Mark tells, sometimes in a very moving way, the story of his relationship with Buck, a chestnut gelding that was his working horse for many years, and how he slowly came to realise that Buck had far more to teach him, than he had to teach Buck. His relationship with this extraordinary horse changed the way he relates, not only to horses, but to humans as well.

Reading through the book, one could think that Mark was very lucky to meet a horse like Buck (have you ever noticed that the best workman always have the best tools?). But I would see it the other way round and I would say that Buck was very lucky to meet Mark, a man who had both the experience and the humility necessary to understand him, trust him and learn from him, for the chance of a horseman like Mark meeting a horse like Buck are probably many, many times greater than the chances of a horse like Buck coming upon a horseman of the caliber of Mark Rashid.
How many more Bucks are outhere, waiting for students?
Come to think of it, there might well be one or two of them on the farm.

Christophe