Begin and Begin Again: The Bright Optimism of Reinventing Life with Horses

An exciting follow-up from the bestselling author of How Good Riders Get Good and Know Better to Do Better.

We all start somewhere with horses. As a toddler on a pony. As a teenager with friends who ride. As an adult who always loved horses, but life just got in the way…until now.

Some of us start over. We sell our horses to go to school, to have careers or babies (or both). We decide to quit dressage and start reining. We fall off…and get back on.

There are all sorts of beginning places, and they can be for the first time or after a “gap.” They can mean you are beginning, or your horse is. They can mean you barely got started, or you started badly. Renowned horseman Denny Emerson knows all about the importance of these beginnings. Through an impressive career in the saddle that spans decades, he has worked with all different breeds, competed at the top international levels of eventing and endurance, lost horses and found new ones, taught young riders and adult amateurs, traded Western tack for English and back again, been injured…only to rehab, climb back in the saddle, and start over.

With inspirational stories of beginning and beginning again from top equestrians, as well as personal reflections from “regular” horse people around the world, these pages promise to inspire a start or a change, and provide a roadmap we all can follow, whatever our ambitions. Emerson reassures us that it doesn’t matter where your beginning point is—start where you are. And, even better, there is a do-over button—you just have to decide to push it. This book is for every horse person who continues to dream of something else or something more, and just needs someone to say: “Begin.”