Former international event rider Eric Smiley has brought along his own top-level
horses for decades. Now he taps his immense knowledge to help riders whose horses
may not have had “the right start.”

Every horse comes with his own “baggage” behaviour or training issues, minor or significant, that may be difficult to pinpoint or resolve. In these pages, Smiley addresses the most common problems he has seen over the years in dressage, eventing, and show jumping, including:

- Problems with head and neck position.
- Connection issues.
- Failure to follow the rules of forward, straight, and regular.
- Difficulty with collection.
- Lack of consistency.

Smiley teaches readers how to identify what isn't working by looking at how things
should work. Then he walks us through dismantling and reassembling the issues,
providing an easy-to-follow system for determining what's potentially wrong with a
horse and choosing sensible exercises for fixing it.