I recently acquired a seven-year-old AQHA gelding named Playboy. Never in my career have I seen a horse holding that much tension in his body. His entire neck felt like one gigantic stone. I was told that he had been a rope horse at some point, was very cold-backed, had suffered some physical abuse, and that last year he endured a full rotational fall in a horse trailer and had torn his latissimus dorsi muscle.

The cowboy was not born in a vacuum; he was molded by the fusion of Spanish, Mexican, Native American, and Anglo cultures, as Daniel Pruitt explains in his glossy, photo-rich book Cowboy: American Icon. A Short History of Wild West Culture.

Secretariat is a household name in the horse industry. The video of “Big Red” winning the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths in 1973 and cementing his Triple Crown win is jaw-dropping. But few know about the Canadian jockey who won those spectacular races — Ron Turcotte. He hails from small-town Drummond, New Brunswick, won 3,032 races over his 17-year career, and was the first of five Turcotte brothers to exchange logging and picking potatoes for the glitzy world of Thoroughbred horse racing. Cumulatively, the Turcottes won over 8,200 races and almost $60 million in purse money.

Fundamental Communications for Training, Riding, and Caring for Your Horse - “A willing servant is still a servant,” says Sharon Wilsie in her introduction to Essential Horse Speak. It’s the premise which started Wilsie’s lifelong journey of understanding how horses communicate. She explains what she’s learned to date in her new book, Essential Horse Speak.