04/10/2026
For all you horse lovers/
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1J36QxKWdu/
This one is very personal.
And actually, the story of how Dr J. Elaine Walker became the editor of Grooming for Greatness did not begin with my book at all.
It began with my brushes.
Elaine had been using Eqclusive brushes for years. She already knew the products, she understood what I was trying to achieve through grooming, and horses had long been a huge part of her own life.
But we were not working together.
Then I published one of my eBooks.
At the time, I asked the people who had bought it for honest feedback.
Elaine was one of the people who took the time to respond.
And what she gave me was not vague praise.
It was thoughtful, professional feedback about where the writing and structure could be stronger.
She was kind about it.
But she was also clear.
There were places where the ideas were stronger than the way I had communicated them.
And instead of being defensive, I listened.
Because I realised very quickly that Elaine could see the knowledge underneath the writing — and she was showing me how much more powerfully I could communicate it.
And then she kept helping me.
A comment here.
A thought there.
A suggestion.
A correction.
A question that made me go away and rethink an entire paragraph.
And slowly, something happened.
I began to trust her.
That sentence probably means more than it appears to.
Because for nearly two years, I had been hiding something.
A manuscript.
My manuscript.
Grooming for Greatness.
I had written this enormous body of work about grooming, horses, observation, touch, coat care, the things I had learned, the things I had questioned and the methodology I had spent years developing.
And almost nobody knew what was really inside it.
Only one person had read it properly.
My apprentice, Maja Stockley
That was it.
I had protected that manuscript for two years because it was not simply another piece of content to me.
It contained so much of what I knew.
So much of what I believed.
And probably quite a lot of me.
Giving it to somebody meant allowing them into something I had kept incredibly close.
And over time, through Elaine’s comments, her honesty, her intelligence and the way she challenged the writing without ever trying to replace my voice with hers, I realised:
I could trust her with it.
But even then, I still needed a push.
And that push came from my friend Sue Brennan
I told Sue the whole story.
How Elaine had responded to my request for feedback.
How much I had started to value her opinion.
How much I trusted her judgement.
And Sue basically said:
“Then why on earth have you not sent her the book?”
And that was the moment.
Sometimes you already know what you need to do.
You just need somebody you trust to say it back to you clearly.
So I sent Elaine the manuscript.
And what has happened since has been one of the most valuable learning experiences of this entire process.
Elaine does not just correct sentences.
She makes me think.
She questions why something is there.
She catches inconsistencies.
She challenges language.
She asks whether a sentence actually says what I think it says.
And sometimes she simply writes something in the margin that makes me stare at the screen for ten minutes.
I have written down her comments.
Her criticisms.
Her explanations.
Things she has taught me about writing.
Things I want to remember for the next book and the one after that.
Because I do not want Elaine simply to make this book better.
I want to become a better writer because I worked with her.
And that is what I think the best people do.
They do not merely improve the work in front of them.
They raise your own standard.
There is another reason I think we work so well together.
Elaine is deeply creative herself.
She is a writer, an academic, an editor — but she is also a musician.
She sings.
She plays.
She writes creatively.
She understands rhythm, voice and language not only academically, but artistically.
And I think you can feel that in the way she edits.
There is a difference between making a sentence technically correct and understanding how a sentence should sound, move and land.
Elaine understands both.
And then, underneath all of that, there are the horses.
Her passion.
Her love.
Her free time.
And that part I understand perhaps better than anything.
Because horses have a funny way of appearing in every part of our lives, do they not?
Even when the “work” is writing a book.
Which brings me back to these photographs.
Elaine had owned my brushes for years.
But her herd has grown and changed, and recently she wanted another grooming system.
This time for somebody rather special.
Her retired rescue Shetland.
And suddenly this whole story went full circle.
The woman who has spent months helping me turn my knowledge into better words is now taking some of that same knowledge back into the field and applying it to one of her own horses.
And I find that genuinely moving.
Because when I look at this little Shetland, I am not thinking:
“Let’s make him shiny.”
Of course I cannot wait to see what happens to that coat.
But that is not where we begin.
We begin by understanding him.
His coat.
His condition.
What is sitting underneath the surface.
What each grooming stage needs to achieve.
What pressure is appropriate.
How he responds.
How those responses change as Elaine works through the grooming process.
The brushes are tools.
The knowledge is what makes them a system.
And somewhere in all of this, Elaine and I seem to have ended up exchanging knowledge in both directions.
She is teaching me to become a better writer.
And I get the enormous privilege of sharing with her something I have spent much of my life learning about horses.
I think that is rather beautiful.
Two very different areas of expertise.
Words and grooming.
Editing and horses.
Creativity and methodology.
All somehow meeting in the middle.
Elaine, thank you.
Thank you for taking my request for feedback seriously when it would have been much easier simply to say, “It’s lovely.”
Thank you for giving me thoughtful, constructive feedback from the beginning.
Thank you for every question, every criticism, every margin note and every moment where you have made me think harder.
Thank you for earning my trust with something I had protected for two years.
And thank you, Sue, for giving me the push to actually send it.
And thank you for being part of Grooming for Greatness.
I am learning enormously from you.
And now I cannot wait to watch this little rescue Shetland’s grooming journey too.
Because yes, I absolutely want to see that beautiful coat come through.
Yes, eventually I want that extraordinary Eqclusive finish.
But Elaine now knows this sentence probably better than most:
the best grooming result does not begin at the surface.
It begins underneath it.
P.S. If this story has made you curious about the thinking Elaine and I are working on together, you can already explore some of it through Beneath the Surface.
Episode 2 — Soft Does Not Mean Kinder: The Truth About Horse Grooming Brushes
https://youtu.be/0Nr_-0URX-Q
Episode 5 — Your Horse Is Responding: Are You Actually Listening?
https://youtu.be/G1V3bJtXNJY
And the Eqclusive grooming systems — where that thinking becomes practical — are here:
https://www.eqclusive.com
Grooming for Greatness will be available to pre-order very soon.
