Tuesday Tip – Driving Horse Books

I thought I would share some driving books that I have loved over the years! Sometimes we just need a little more support when we are learning to drive or even when we have driven for years. Books seem to fill that need well! Especially if you don’t have access to a personal trainer or the ability to go to clinics.

The Essential Guide to Carriage Driving. This is a wonderful book, easy to read and packed full of great information. It has everything from harness selection to bits and vehicles.

Breaking and Training the Driving Horse was the first book I read about training a driving horse. I found it very helpful when I was just starting out and winging it on my own!

Carriage Driving is a wonderful book about taking your driving further. They use dressage in hand training to start their driving horses and lay things out in an easy to understand way. This book may not be the best for very new beginner drivers or people knew to horses.

Driving Horses is a natural horsemanship approach to training horses to drive. Nate Bowers also has a DVD set out that walks you through the steps of training a horse to drive.

Lastly, my own book! When I was training horses and ponies professionally my customers were usually new to driving and most had never driven before. So I would put together a binder with step-by-step instructions about how to harness and photos showing all the parts and how they went on their pony. This took a lot of time and effort. My hubby was watching make my 30th binder and said, “You should write a book.” I just laughed. But a year later he said it again and this book was born! This is the second edition with more information and even more photos. The layout is more professional in this edition as well. I’m very proud of this little book and get emails all the time from people who enjoyed it and found it really helped them. Step-By-Step Guide to Training a Miniature Horse to Drive. (These steps work on big horses, mules and donkeys as well! I even helped a gal train her buffalo to drive using these steps!)

Please leave a comment with your favorite driving book! I know there are many more out there that I haven’t read yet!

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