Getting in Touch: Understand and Influence Your Horse's Personality

There is no clinical measuring standard, data or reasonable efforts to back up the claims about how many hair whirls a horse has determines the animal's character.

I highly recommend, Dr. Robert Miller's books and videos on equine behavior. At least it is based in equine natural history and DNA behavior. That is true substance.

Avoid this book and don't spend the money.


Interesting, but not magical.   December 23, 2002
 10 out of 15 found this review helpful

I bought this book and was well into it before I realized it was TTouch book (procounced "tee-touch")! My only previous experience with TTouch was a late night info-mercial several years ago. Their angle to snag buyers was to make it seem almost magical. Simple touch excercises completely changing an animal's personality! I was sold, but never got around to making the call.
The majority of the book points out facial characteristics which were incredibly helpful for me, one who is notoriously horrible at recognizing horses, but the validity of Tellington-Jones' theory that they corrolate with aspects of their personality and intelligence was quickly and paradoxically disproved by the author! This made for a very confusing read, in the end.
Unless one took the time to memorize the first section which is littered with too-vague illustrations and too many differentiations of anatomy, you'll be either lost, or constantly flipping to the beginning for the rest of the book. Like I said and many reviewers will contend, this is a very interesting book that's pretty hard to resist for most horsemen. If it takes, however, assurance of mystical properties to make the modern horsemen realize a horse's personality is as sensitive and complicated as yours and mine, indeed traditionalism has plagued equestrian sports.
By the way, my horse found the TTouch excercises interesting at first, but quickly caught on and now only gets annoyed when I start the "clouded leopard" excercise. Did I mention the ridiculous excercise titles?


MUST HAVE IF YOU ARE A HORSIE PERSON   December 7, 2001
 15 out of 15 found this review helpful

I volunteer as a horse wrangler with a non-profit group and get to work with a number of different horses. I read this book cover to cover and carry it with me whenever I'm around horses. It is All the horse people I work with borrowed it so much I had to buy a second copy just for myself! The information in the book is very easy to read and understand. Every time I see a horse or look at a picture, I look for the "moose-nose", the "pin ears" and the forehead swirls. And its amazing how these characteristics are tied into personality! A must have book!