Pomfret's Trafalgar Square Books Supplies Wisdom for the Horse World 

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• Anne Wallace Allen ©️ Seven Days
• Caroline Robbins (left) and Martha Cook

Many people who love horses view them as powerful, beautiful companions and athletes, and seek ways to strengthen the human-animal partnership. But it's not always easy.

Horses' first impulse if startled is to kick or run away, which poses a danger for human handlers. They're herd animals with a complex social structure, but when domesticated, they're made to live in barn stalls. They're also expected to stand still to be groomed and shod, to travel in horse trailers, and to be ridden — all skills that need to be taught. Misunderstandings between humans and horses are legion.

Trafalgar Square Books, an influential horse book publisher based in Vermont, is helping the two species communicate.

The North Pomfret imprint publishes books and videos that cover training, competition, trail riding, dressage and dozens of other equestrian disciplines. Its titles offer wisdom on exercise routines for riders, horsemanship for kids, horse foot care and training racehorses to become riding horses. There are books on building confidence (for both human and horse), yoga for riders, and Pilates for horses.

The concept of working with the horse — as opposed to just commanding it — started gaining popularity in the 1980s. These days, finding ways of bettering this partnership is of widespread interest among riders. For Trafalgar Square, titles that teach humans the horses' perspective are big sellers, such as recent hits Horse Brain, Human Brain: The Neuroscience of Horsemanship and Horse Speak: The Equine-Human Translation Guide.

"There's a great deal of interest in horses as thinking, sentient beings and looking into the horse's emotional life, versus just using them," said managing director Martha Cook, who has been working at Trafalgar Square since she graduated from college in 1987. "They're not just beasts of burden."

Trafalgar Square got its start as a distributor in the early 1970s, when Caroline Robbins, a rider from England, moved onto a large farm in Pomfret with her American husband, Ted Robbins, a psychiatrist. Caroline's father worked in publishing in the United Kingdom, and the couple began doing U.S. distribution for some specialty British publications in niches such as chess and rail travel.

Horse books entered the scene when Caroline Robbins was taking riding lessons from instructor Sally Swift of Brattleboro. Swift had been thinking of writing a book but didn't know how to start.

"Sally was writing things down on napkins and pieces of paper," said Cook, who grew up near Brattleboro and also studied riding under Swift. "She said, 'Caroline, you know about books and publishing.'"

But Robbins had never published a book before, Cook noted; her business was distributing them. So Swift and Robbins sought editing help from Woodstock-area equestrian Karen McCollom, who was competing internationally.

The result was Centered Riding, a now-famous text that has been translated into 16 languages and sold more than 800,000 copies since its first printing in 1985. It's Trafalgar Square's all-time bestseller, Cook said.

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• Courtesy
• Sampling of books from Trafalgar Square Books

Trafalgar Square grew to include more than 50 British publishers. The Robbinses sold the company in 2006 but held on to the horse books division. Caroline Robbins serves as publisher, though many day-to-day decisions fall to Cook and managing editor and graphic designer Rebecca Didier, a rider and writer who has been with Trafalgar Square since 2003.

While the publishing company and mail-order operation are still based in the Robbinses' barn in Pomfret, the national warehouse is in Jackson, Tenn. Trafalgar Square has about 200 equestrian books in print at the moment, as well as audiobooks and some streamed videos.

Not all of its books are about horses. In 2010, Trafalgar Square put out Naturally Curious: A Photographic Field Guide and Month-by-Month Journey Through the Fields, Woods, and Marshes of New England, by Valley News columnist Mary Holland. It won that year's National Outdoor Book Award.

"Caroline and I were both readers of the Valley News, and we loved her columns, so we approached her," Cook said. Of her book, she added, "There was nothing like it out there."

In September, Trafalgar Square is releasing Beyond Dog Massage: A Breakthrough Method for Relieving Soreness and Achieving Connection, by Jim Masterson, an equine and canine bodywork expert who teaches the ways touch can bring comfort and calm to these pets and partners.

Cook and Didier also recently started publishing memoirs. One of the first was the 2020 release Distant Skies: An American Journey on Horseback, about Melissa A. Priblo Chapman's cross-country journey from New York to California on her horse in 1982, when she was 23.

Trafalgar Square has published 400 horse books since Centered Riding. Along with seeking to create a better understanding between humans and horses, Cook and Didier have set out to unite the horse world. Deep divisions exist between riding disciplines such as English and Western. So the two English riders spent a week together herding cattle at a guest ranch in Wyoming to expand their knowledge of other styles.

The two work consciously to keep the focus on what is best for the horse, whatever that horse happens to be doing, Didier said.

"It's a real mission, and it crosses all boundaries and divisions," Didier said. "'For the good of the horse' should be the focus of whatever discipline you choose to pursue."