Conversations with a Prince: A Year of Riding at East Hill Farm

When after many years Helen Husher returned to horseback riding, she discovered that her perceptions of the physical, mental, and spiritual aspects of the sport had in some ways changed, but in other ways had become enhanced. Horses of Instruction is an account of her first year back in the saddle, her trials and triumphs under the instructors and on the horses that inhabited the small Vermont barn that became the author’s daily destination and haven.

We get to know the people who frequent East Hill Farm: trainers with differing views on the nature of riding and horse care, and fellow boarders and students whose goals and idiosyncrasies will strike an identifiably familiar chord in every reader-rider. But most vividly and lovingly drawn are the horses themselves: Dr. Denton, the Thoroughbred “who displays his heritage by objecting to everything”; Railund, the “self-possessed and schoolmasterly” Dutch warmblood; Reba, “whose responsiveness has a moral dimension, a desire for order, certainty and knowledge”; and especially Prince, “unglamorous but agreeably transparent, playing his life for laughs.”

No detail escapes Husher’s perceptiveness. “One of the sayings in the horse world is that a clean horse is a happy horse, but in my experience this is not really true--horses like dirt, and go to considerable trouble to burrow around in as much of it as they can find. But what horses do like is to be tended, and I think this is what this old saw points to--being touched and noticed and having their parts inspected and admired puts them in a good mood.”

More than just a horse book, Horses of Instruction transcends the genre through the author’s keen eye, infectious humor, and deft style. With it, Helen Husher joins the ranks of Jane Smiley, Michael Korda, and Thomas McGuane as one of America’s finest equestrian writers.

Helen Husher is the author of A View from Vermont and Off the Leash: Subversive Journeys Around Vermont. Her articles and stories have appeared in Vermont Life, Vermont Magazine, Seven Days, and other publications. She lives in Montpelier, Vermont.