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God forbid that I should go to any heaven in which there are no horses.
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R. B Cunningham Graham

BEN'S BOOKS

About the Products

These ebooks are available for immediate download to your computer. When the short checkout process is completed you will receive an email containing a link to your products which you are then free to access. Secure payment is taken via PayPal, we accept all Credit / Debit Cards. A PayPal account is not required. The whole process should take less than five minutes to complete.

When the simple checkout procedure is completed you will be able to save the files to your hard disk. An email with a link to your purchases will also be sent to the address you supply. See below for more information about the products.

For those of you who would prefer a printed version of these books please scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Don't want to pay online?

You can pay for this new printed combined version of The Horseman Within and How to Create and Use a Shaping Plan, by sending a cheque or postal order for £11.95 made payable to B. Hart to 5 Riverview Drive, Colyton, Devon EX24 6PR.

Please ensure you enclose your address and contact details with your order and payment.

Sometimes it is hard to overcome problems with equines, not impossible, just very hard.

The Horseman Within - £6.00


The Horseman Within

Whatever your chosen method of horsemanship these principles will help you to improve your skills as a horseman, solve problem behaviours and improve your relationships with horses, donkeys and mules.

The book contains sixteen core principles that allow you to reach your potential as a horseman. This book is not about being a horse trainer it is about becoming a horseman. If you love horses, donkeys and mules then the Horseman Within will be instrumental in helping you to reach a balanced, effective and honest relationship with your equine companions.

By increasing your understanding of how your own behaviour and beliefs affect your horse you will enhance your ability as a horseman. These principles allow you to follow your own path and reach your own destiny. Every chapter contains five steps to help you to fully develop each principle. This is not ABC of horse training, but rather a guide to helping your equines by increasing your skills and awareness of the principles of Horsemanship.

Principles include;

  • Enjoying the Journey
  • Patience
  • Listening with Your Eyes
  • Timing
  • Total Responsibility
  • Knowing Where You Are Going
  • Thinking with the Equine Brain
  • Making Mistakes
  • Listening to Your Intuition
  • Expanding the Comfort Zones
  • Seeing the Glass Half Full
  • Be Aware of Labels
  • Never Having Time
  • Shaping Behaviour
  • Love
  • Trust

These principles will increase your ability to shape behaviour, use positive reinforcement and improve your communication. Your patience will increase and you will learn to trust yourself and listen to your intuition. These principles will help you to think with an equine brain and thereby understand your horse's world. Most importantly you will be able top enjoy your journey to horsemanship.

Whatever your association with horses, whether you have an equine behaviour problem to overcome or if you just want to learn more and understand your horse better these 63 pages will improve the relationship you have with your horse forever. If you have ever wanted to understand your horse's behaviour more fully and improve your ability to communicate with your horse, the Horseman Within is for you.

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Elements of Horsemanship - 50 Enlightening thoughts for reflection and contemplation - £5.00


Elements of Horsemanship - 50 Enlightening thoughts for reflection and contemplation

The Elements of Horsemanship will help you to develop the relationship with your horse that you always wanted. Unlike other training books The Elements of Horsemanship recognises the unique nature of both you and your horse, therefore it will not tell what to do and how you should behave with your horse. You are both unique individuals who need to learn understand each other. The Elements of Horsemanship achieves this by asking you to consider the 50 elements involved in your relationship with your horse.

You cannot make a horse respect you, but you can only be the sort of person your horse will respect. You will learn not what to think but rather how to think. Whatever your method of training the Elements of Horsemanship will develop your equine relationship beyond recognition. This is a true example of learning how to think not what to think and it will benefit every equine relationship you ever have.

Elements such as Balance, Communication, Confidence, Courage, Dominance, Harmony, Fun, Leadership, Self Doubt, Truth, Power, Partnership & Vulnerability encourage you to develop your own path to horsemanship and to develop your own relationship with each equine you meet. Understanding these Elements will improve your understanding of equine behaviour. As you explore the Elements of Horsemanship you will learn to be more understanding, more patient and more accepting and you will become someone your horse wants to be with.

By choosing an element you can examine your own beliefs and understand your own motivations. Each element offers a small task that will help develop your understanding of the element and its affect on your ability to communicate with your horse.

The journey to enjoying a better relationship with horses starts with discovering yourself. These 50 elements are the beginning of finding the horseman that is within us all.

The Elements of Horsemanship provides a daily support for the lessons learnt in the Horseman Within.

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How to create and use a shaping plan - £4.00


How to create and use a shaping plan

Shaping behaviour is probably the single most important skill any equine owner can master. If you want to improve your horse's performance, remove problem behaviours or train a new one, being able to shape behaviour will transform your skill as a trainer, whatever method of training you use.

Two of the greatest problems horse owners encounter, is not knowing what to do next with their horse and by rushing their training, missing out vital elements of behaviour. By using a shaping plan both of these problems can be safely and quickly removed.

Shaping allows any problem behaviour, fear or phobia to be tackled safely and consistently. The greatest difficulty with shaping is learning to do it correctly. Most owners already accidentally shape behaviour to some degree, many of us just do not realise they are shaping. By understanding shaping and developing our ability to do it well, we transform our ability to communicate with our equines. Shaping is a vital skill that we must master in order to reach our full potential as a trainer.

These 15 pages will help you learn how to write an effective shaping plan for any training situation or behaviour by creating the right goal and by understanding where to start.

You will learn how to use the plan during training and how to start each session safely as well as how to progress from step to step. Study an example of a shaping plan for loading and use the blank shaping plan sheets to start creating your own shaping plans.

The ability to shape behaviour well is the key to good, consistent communication with our equines. Once we know how to shape behaviour training becomes easier and safer.

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Together in one great printed book, The Horseman Within and How to Create and Use a Shaping Plan - £10.00


Together in one great printed book, The Horseman Within and How to Create and Use a Shaping Plan

The Horseman Within and How to Create and Use a Shaping Plan have been combined in a printed version for those of you who like the feel of a real book in your hands.

These two e-books have been printed and bound together on double sided A4 to make one book that you can pick up and use when ever you want. Same great content delivered through your door not your inbox.

Pay through Pay Pal and be sure to leave you contact address for postage of your book.

UK postage and packing £1.95, Europe & North America £3.45

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The Art and Science of Clicker Training for Horses - £13.99


The Art and Science of Clicker Training for Horses

An illustrated guide to an exciting, effective and positive method of training equines.

Whether you want to remove bad behaviours, reward new ones, build confidence, improve problem solving skills or just understand your horse better, clicker training is the most positive approach to equine training currently available.

Ben Hart explains the evolution of clicker training from its use with dogs and marine animals, to its place in horsemanship, and the importance of refining its use for equines. From experience gained all over the world, Ben answers all the most frequently asked questions, while solving the most common problems that are experienced during clicker training.

The author bases his approach to training on mutual trust between equine and human, using common sense and honesty to encourage people to follow their own path to horsemanship. He skilfully balances art and science to help anyone develop a long-term approach to equine training and behaviour that works with horses, donkeys and mules.

Clear, concise and accessible, this is an indispensable guide to an effective and positive method of training equines.

Contents

  • Introduction
  • 1. Clicker training, what's all the fuss about?
  • 2. What exactly is clicker training?
  • 3. Where did clicker training come from?
  • 4. What is the advantage of clicker training?
  • 5. Is clicker training for equines just like clicker training dogs?
  • 6. Doesn't using food rewards cause equines to bite?
  • 7. Can anyone do it and with every equine?
  • 8. Can I use clicker training in conjunction with my other training methods?
  • 9. What is the difference between clicker training horses, donkeys and mules?
  • 10. What do I need to get started?
  • 11. Do I have to use a clicker?
  • 12. How do I start clicker training?
  • 13. How do I use successive approximation?
  • 14. Do I have to click for everything forever?
  • 15. What can I teach with clicker training?
  • 16. How to can I use clicker training to solve problems?
  • 17. Can clicker training be used for emotional development of equines?
  • 18. Can it be used in riding?
  • 19. What else do I need to know about clicker training?
  • 20. What is the future of clicker training?
Sample from the first Chapter, Clicker Training, what's the fuss about?

The Clicker has been portrayed by some horse trainers as a magic solution to every imaginable horse problem and excitingly the method has that potential. However, this claim of infallibility is the biggest danger to the success of clicker training as an equine training method. Clicker training is often sold as an easy, quick fix and positive method through which anyone and every equine can succeed. If only it were that simple, horses all over the world would have their lives transformed and many "behaviourists" would be happily out of business because there would be the wonderful situation of no more problem horses to "fix".

I believe that clicker training does have the fantastic potential to transform equine training, but only if people see it works. If its use is over simplified and incorrect training causes it to be ineffective, the horse world will throw the clicker in the back of the tack box along with all the other gadgets and equipment that have failed the horse enthusiast in the last 20 years.

Clicker training has been marketed as the only 100% positive training method for equines, it has been labelled as the magic modern way to train any animal to do anything, but are these claims true? Is clicker training magic or is it just another method of training that some smart horse trainer or scientist made up in order to make money. In order to understand whether all of the claims about clicker training are realistic, we need to ask a few questions.

If you would like a personal message in the cover of your new book, please include instructions during checkout.

Publication date 8th September.

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I have spent time writing my thoughts and beliefs on some aspects of horsemanship in order to help more equines. These mini books are my beliefs on what it takes to improve the human relationship with equines. They are based on the balance of art and science and my observations and studies with my clients and many wonderful equine teachers.

Instead of a just writing a book, I have chosen this format because I believe it is most in line with my beliefs and moral values as a trainer. I want people to choose what they need and when they want to buy it. I want people to be able to budget for the cost of information and I want people to find their own path, to do this each person needs to choose what they require to help them with where they are on their journey. I hope this way you are able to take what you need to learn with a minimum of financial investment but with the maximum potential gain.

I would however urge anyone who wants to improve their relationship with their animals to read The Horseman Within. I believe who we are as a person is who we are as a trainer and that by examining ourselves we can better understand the emotional states of others. To get the best from my other ideas and writings I rely on the fact that the reader understands and has developed the principles contained in The Horseman Within. There is no magic, just learning, no ego, just honesty everyone can have a better understanding of their equine partner if they read and practise what they read.

"There are many books, articles and manuals on the market to help us achieve just one goal that I believe every person who spends time with horses wants to reach. Being a good horseman or horsewoman by achieving the ultimate relationship with horses, being able to communicate so effectively with them that you have a partnership that seems impossible to see where the horse ends and the human begins.

None of these resources look and the building blocks that truly create this kind of relationship and none of them ever ask you to look at yourself as a human being and as a horseman. Ben, you taken these building blocks and given them to your readers. Finally someone has taken a look at the foundation of horsemanship and shown us how to find the horseman within ourselves empowering us to follow our own paths to true horsemanship.

It has taken me 2 years of personal comfort zone pushing and shaping my own behaviour to finally be able to get back in the saddle. It was this book and Ben's work, that has enabled me to get back on my horse. I have finally found the piece of me that I had lost a long time ago. I was then able to create a Shaping Plan to help my horse and I achieve our potential and enjoy life together again.

The Horseman Within makes you stop and think for yourself instead of following the 'leader', The Shaping Plan helps you to create a path to your goal and finally The Elements of Horsemanship then help to support your development at a much deeper level enabling you to really 'Find the Horseman Within'.

Many other trainers out there get large followings for fantastic shows and demos and how quickly they can get a job done with a horse. Ben doesn't have that kind of ego he helps people have the confidence to be their own horseman with their own horse.

Thank you Ben for your commitment to horse and humans, I could not have come this far this fast without you."

D Stanford