Everyone should have a hobby. If you are thinking mine has something to do with horses, you would be partially right. I do spend most of my time working with horses, writing about horses, talking about horses, thinking about horses, living with horses. But I do have a hobby that only partially revolves around horses. I write children’s book.

C.S. Lewis wrote: “When I was young, I read children’s books in secret. When I was an adult, I read them openly and with pleasure.”

C.S. Lewis is of course the author of the Narnia books, so I am in good company. If you are not familiar with his children’s books, you have a treat in store for you.

When I was three years old, my parents read “The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe” to me for the first time. JRR Tolkein’s “The Hobbit” was read to me when I was four.

These books had a powerful influence on my life. Just the fact that I remember listening to these stories when I was so very young shows you the impact that they had.

When I talk about horse training, I say that all training methods are made up of three layers. There is the underlying belief system, the guiding principles and the methods we chose. When I describe the core ethical belief system that guides my training, I say to people: “I read ‘Black Beauty‘ when I was little, and I cried when Ginger died.” When it comes to horses, I am unashamedly sentimental.

I would have been six or seven when I encountered ‘Black Beauty’ for the first time. So before there was Ginger, there was Narnia.

Nowadays everyone knows about Middle Earth, but when I encountered C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien, that was years before they were widely known in the US. Every fall my parents would get the children’s catalog from Blackwells Bookstore in Oxford England.

In October we would spend days pouring over the catalog and choose the books we wanted for Christmas. In December a carton would arrive from Blackwells containing the books we had selected.

Ordering from Blackwells meant we had many books years before they were widely known in the US. It’s hard to imagine it now, but growing up, I was the only person in my class who knew about hobbits.

My favorite books were filled with magic. I wanted books that would take me to Narnia and Middle Earth. Of course, I loved the Paddington books and was charmed by Winnie the Pooh. There was also ‘Green Smoke‘, and ‘The Children of Green Knowe‘, to name just a few of my favorites.

There were never enough of these books to satisfy so I starting writing my own. I write the kind of stories I would have enjoyed reading as a child. The magic is real, the animals have voices, and fauns and dragons do exist.

Why am I writing about this? You know me as a horse trainer, and the author of the clicker training books. That’s been my focus for thirty plus years. I want horse-friendly, kind, caring, compassionate training to become the norm in the horse world.

The path that put me on an interception course with clicker training began when I was three years old and I found my way to Narnia for the first time. The children’s books that I most loved have very much shaped the person I am today. They taught me important values. I read ‘Black Beauty‘ when I was little and I cried when Ginger died.

The path that children books put me on led to the writing of “Clicker Training for your Horse” and my other books on clicker training.

These training books have had a major impact in the horse world. They provide an alternative to the force-based, “show them you’re the boss” training that is so prevalent throughout the horse world. People all around the planet are now using clicker training. They are recognizing that you don’t have to “hit harder” to get horses to listen to you. In fact, when you stop hitting them, they listen to you so much more.

I’ve been listening to my horses, and they are telling me it is time to share the children’s books I have written. They are filled with love and loyalty. Those are important lessons to learn to carry forward into a life filled with horses.

I hope you are curious and you want to know more. I am going to make you wait until tomorrow to unwrap my new book!

Coming tomorrow: More Details!