In 2008, 26-year-old Tik Maynard faced a crossroads not unlike that of other young adults. A university graduate and modern pentathlete, he suffered both a career-ending injury and a painful breakup, leaving him suddenly adrift. The son of prominent Canadian equestrians, Maynard decided to spend the next year as a "working student." In the horse industry, working students aspire to become professional riders or trainers, and willingly trade labor for hands-on education.

In this illuminating book, brain scientist and horsewoman Janet Jones describes human and equine brains working together. Using plain language, she explores the differences and similarities between equine and human ways of negotiating the world. Mental abilities—like seeing, learning, fearing, trusting, and focusing—are discussed from both human and horse perspectives. Throughout, true stories of horses and handlers attempting to understand each other—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—help to illustrate the principles.

November 1958: the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Into the rarefied atmosphere of wealth and tradition comes the most unlikely of horses - a drab white former plow horse named Snowman - and his rider, Harry de Leyer. They were the longest of all longshots - and their win was the stuff of legend.

Crowded in the Middle of Nowhere: Tales of Humor and Healing from Rural America is a collection of humorous and poignant stories from a veterinarian in a small, dusty farming and ranching community in rural West Texas. Dr. Brock gives you an intimate look into his small-town and big-hearted perspective on life, animals, and their owners. His unique perspective and tales of doctoring beloved pets, cantankerous livestock, and occasionally their owners will make you smile, laugh, cry, and evoke every other emotion under the sun.

Maggie Atwood and Becky McCabe, mother and daughter, both champion riders, vowed to never, ever, go up against one another. Until the tense, harrowing competitions leading to the Paris Olympics. Mother and daughter share a dream: to be the best horsewoman in the world. Coronado is Maggie’s horse. An absolutely top-tier Belgian warmblood. Sky is Becky’s horse. A small, speedy Dutch warmblood.

The irresistible tale of 19-year-old Martha Lessen, a female horse whisperer trying to make a go of it in a man's world. It was thought that the only way to break a horse was to buck the wild out of it, and broken ribs and tough falls just went with the job. But over several long, hard winter months, many of the townsfolk in this remote county of eastern Oregon witness Martha's way of talking in low, sweet tones to horses believed beyond repair---and getting miraculous, almost immediate results.

Did you know there is an area of your brain known as the "Lizard Brain" that thinks only about the immediate moment and your means of survival? Yes, in certain circumstances, your "Rational Brain" can effectively "shut down" and you are at the mercy of a reptile... dry-mouthed, sweating, queasy, unable to think clearly - even though you know better. When does the Lizard Brain run the show? It can happen in any number of unfamiliar, uncomfortable, challenging, or "stressful" riding situations. But here's the thing: with the right kind of training, you can learn to manage the reptile within.

In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest - nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.

Lissa Bachner was born with a passion for horses and won her first blue ribbon at age five. Other awards would follow as a young rider, and for years Lissa trained with jumpers, tackling more difficult leaps, and working to perfect her ride. When blindness struck in her teens, it appeared her passion for riding would come to an end. How could she jump hurdles when she could barely navigate through her own home? But success, trust, and love came to Lissa when her trainer convinced her to buy a "diamond in the rough" from Germany.

The last thing Bree Connor expected after being diagnosed with a terminal illness was a second chance at life. But somehow, that's exactly what she got.

Grant Golliher is what some would call a “horse whisperer”, able to get a wild horse to calmly accept a saddle and a rider in just hours without the use of force. Through training thousands of horses, many traumatized or abused, Golliher was able to learn essential lessons about communication, boundaries, fairness, trust, and respect to foster more fulfilled relationships, and in turn, create a richer life.

In 1954, 63-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins embarked on an impossible journey. She had no money and no family, she had just lost her farm, and her doctor had given her only two years to live. But Annie wanted to see the Pacific Ocean before she died. She ignored her doctor’s advice to move into the county charity home. Instead, she bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men’s dungarees, and headed south in mid-November, hoping to beat the snow.

Last Chance Mustang is the story of Samson, a formerly free-roaming, still wild-at-heart American mustang that was plucked from his mountainous Nevada home and thrown into the domestic horse world, where he was brutalized and victimized. After years of abuse, Samson had evolved into a hateful and hated, maladjusted beast - until the day he found his way to a rural Illinois farm, an ill-equipped owner, and one last chance.

Few will hire competitive rider, Viola Parker, since the famous jumper, Wastrel, crashed to his death with her aboard. Not only that, her attitude just landed her out of work...again. She can barely afford her whipped-cream-in-a-can addiction. Now, before she's 30, she must keep a job for one year and receive a glowing letter of recommendation to get a surprise trust fund set up by her absentee parents. A trust fund that could represent freedom and independence - or might be worth nothing.

When Kate Bowman temporarily moves to her grandmother’s Missouri farm with her husband and baby son, she learns that the lessons that most enrich our lives often come unexpectedly. The family has given Kate the job of convincing Grandma Rose, who's become increasingly stubborn and forgetful, to move off her beloved land and into a nursing home. But Kate knows such a change would break her grandmother’s heart.

When Chris McDougall agreed to take in a donkey from an animal hoarder, he thought it would be no harder than the rest of the adjustments he and his family had made after moving from Philadelphia to the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country. But when he arrived, Sherman was in such bad shape he could barely move, and his hair was coming out in clumps. Chris decided to undertake a radical rehabilitation program designed not only to heal Sherman's body but to heal his mind as well - and so Chris decided to teach Sherman how to run.

In 2008, 26-year-old Tik Maynard faced a crossroads not unlike that of other young adults. A university graduate and modern pentathlete, he suffered both a career-ending injury and a painful breakup, leaving him suddenly adrift. The son of prominent Canadian equestrians, Maynard decided to spend the next year as a "working student." In the horse industry, working students aspire to become professional riders or trainers, and willingly trade labor for hands-on education.

Everyone knows a woman who loves horses. Maybe she rides whenever she can find the time, maybe she rode as a young girl, or maybe she just devoured the Black Stallion books. Twenty years ago, Nancy Shulins let go of one dream - having a child - and worked toward another one: learning to ride and, eventually, having her own horse. In the process, she learned what it means to love another being so much you can’t imagine life without them.

Scarred and battered loner Zane Taylor has a gift with animals, particularly horses, but he's at a total loss when it comes to knowing how to handle women. Even though he's sworn off love, he can't seem to stay away from Bryn Callahan. He's known for being a horse whisperer, but can't seem to find his voice at all where Bryn is concerned. Bryn Callahan has a heart for strays, but she is through trying to save damaged men. She vows to only date nice guys, which is a category that does not include Zane Taylor. Too bad he's the one who sets her pulse racing every time she's around him.

Many astonishing and affecting things happen at the racetrack, and the mysterious universe of horse racing, passionate, cold-hearted, pure, corrupt, is woven into a marvelous tapestry of joy and love, chicanery, folly, greed, and reckless courage. Spanning two years on the circuit, from Kentucky and California to New York and Paris, Horse Heaven, puts us among trainers, nervey jockeys, billionaire breeders, and restless track wives.

Combining the drama of The God of Animals with the powerful realism of Chosen by a Horse, award-winning poet Jana Harris tells the inspiring story of her twenty-four-year relationship with a troubled but beautiful, blood-red feral mare who, in spite of her difficult past, has a talent for healing and helping every human and other being she comes into contact with.

Founder Ellie Laks started The Gentle Barn after adopting a sick goat from a run-down petting zoo in 1999. Some 200 animals later (including chickens, horses, pigs, cows, rabbits, emus, and more), The Gentle Barn has become an extraordinary nonprofit that brings together a volunteer staff of community members and at-risk teens to rehabilitate abandoned and/or abused animals. My Gentle Barn weaves together the story of how the Barn came to be what it is today with Ellie's own journey.

At forty years old, a successful writer, husband and father, no longer toiling on offshore drilling rigs, was Paul Carter happily nestled in the cotton wool of suburban life enjoying the fruits of his labour? Was he f**k! With his manic life left far behind and the perfect opportunity to take it easy stretched before him what else would a middle-aged, bike obsessed, man want? Yes, that's right, he'd want to be the first guy to ride around Australia on an underpowered experimental motorcycle that runs on used cooking oil, wouldn't he? Preferably without getting hit by a semi-trailer full of bridge parts.

Many horse trainers, even those who espouse the so-called natural horsemanship approach, take the position that horses who fail to obey a human's request are doing so as much out of perversity as ignorance. That's not Mark Rashid's view. In his words, "If we understand that horses can't separate the way they feel from the way they act, then we can start to see that unwanted behavior isn't bad behavior at all. More times than not, it's just the horse expressing the way he feels at that particular moment in time....

Jo Anne Normile was not supposed to keep the foal, an exuberant Thoroughbred with only a few white hairs on his reddish-brown forehead. But she fell in love with the young horse, who had literally been born into her arms. The breeder finally said she could keep the colt, whom she nicknamed "Baby" - but only if she raced him. It was difficult to take Baby away from the safety of his pasture. But Normile had made a promise.

>In 1938, 19-year-old cowboy Bud Frazer sets his sights on becoming a stunt rider in the movies. Fantasizing about rubbing shoulders with the great screen cowboys of his youth, he leaves his home in Echol Creek, Oregon, and heads for Hollywood. On the long bus ride south, Bud meets a young woman who also harbors dreams of making it in the movies, though not as a starlet but as a writer, a real writer.

Best-selling author Michael Korda's Horse People is the story - sometimes hilariously funny, sometimes sad and moving, always shrewdly observed - of a lifetime love affair with horses, and of the bonds that have linked humans with horses for more than 10,000 years. It is filled with intimate portraits of the kind of people, rich or poor, Eastern or Western, famous or humble, whose lives continue to revolve around the horse. Korda is a terrific storyteller, and his book is intensely personal and seductive, a joy for everyone who loves horses.

In The Faraway Horses, Buck Brannaman shares his renowned methods for horse training and provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse into Robert Redford's movie The Horse Whisperer, for which he was the technical adviser.

Amanda Owen has been seen by millions on ITV's The Dales, living a life that has almost gone in today's modern world, a life ruled by the seasons and her animals. She is a farmer's wife and shepherdess, living alongside her husband, Clive, and seven children at Ravenseat, a 2,000 acre sheep hill farm at the head of Swaledale in North Yorkshire. It's a challenging life but one she loves.

For 41 years, Samson Brown has been caring for Hannah, the lone elephant at the down-at-the-heels Max L. Biedelman Zoo. Having vowed not to retire until an equally loving and devoted caretaker is found to replace him, Sam rejoices when smart, compassionate Neva Wilson is hired as the new elephant keeper. But Neva quickly discovers what Sam already knows: that despite their loving care, Hannah is isolated from other elephants and her feet are nearly ruined from standing on hard concrete all day.