Roberts, Monty. The Man Who Listens to Horses: The Story of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer. New York: Random House 1996. Print.
It all dates from those summers alone in the high desert, me lying on my belly and watching wild horses with my binoculars for hours at a time. Straining to see in the moonlight, striving to fathom mustang ways, I knew instinctively I had chanced upon something important but could not know that it would shape my life. In 1948 I was a boy of thirteen learning the language of horses.
Description:
It's not often you read about someone who observes conditions, comes up with a theory of how to improve the situation, and then successfully puts those techniques into practice. It is even more rare when the discoverer is a thirteen-year-old boy who patiently learns a secret and then successfully employs his new-found idea into practice in thousands of cases over the next decades, even demonstrating itin front of the Queen of England.
Such a tale belongs to Monty Roberts and his fascinating work understanding the training of wild mustang horses as detailed in his autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses: The Story of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer. He was a horseman almost from birth, growing up on a ranch where his father was a nationally-acclaimed horse trainer. Monty won his first riding trophy at age four and gathered in more throughout his childhood, culminating with two national championships with his Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College rodeo team. He appeared in hundreds of movies as a stunt double starting at age four, later riding as Roddy McDowell, Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor (in National Velvet), Charleton Heston, Tab Hunter, and a "city-slicker" named James Dean. Monty was hired to train Dean to resemble a cowboy and they became great friends and business partners, so close that Dean's agent made his first call to Monty from the car wreck that claimed the actor's life).
What started Monty's career in horse-training centered on two situationss. First, he daily observed his father use age-old techniques of dominating and beating wild horses to "break" them and make them manageable. Monty felt there could be a more humane way of accomplishing this conditioning of wild, independent mustangs.
Second, at age thirteen he volunteered to round up several hundred wild horses for use in a local rodeo where contestants try to saddle and ride untamed animals. (These "untameable" horses afterwards were sold cheaply for slaughter at a meatpacking establishment.) Monty used his horse-gathering trip to learn how wild mustangs, a notably silent creature who rarely made noises in the wild, communicated with each other to keep order and unify their herd. This grouping of numbers was vital to the horses to protect themselves from predators, something a lone horse could not hope to accomplish alone on his own.
Monty watched while the dominant herd female dealt with a young troublemaking horse by making disapproving, direct eye contact, ear position, and turning her body away from him as a shield. This forced the recalcitrant animal to retreat yards away from the herd. The lead female maintained eye contact and body position for hours and even days, warning the other horse not to rejoin the herd until it was submissive. Submission was shown by the chastised animal lowering his head, making chewing motions, and sticking its tongue out.
Employing these mannerisms of disapproving eye contact, body position, and gentleness, Monty developed a technique he call "Join-Up" (rather than "breaking") for taming wild horses. He found by using unusual subtleties which mattered greatly to horses, he could train an unridden horse to calmly accept a bridle, saddle, and rider within 30 minutes, a task that took experienced horse trainers like his father several brutal weeks of aggressive restraint and beatings to accomplish.
Keeping my mouth closed invited the horse's discomfort, opening it slightly was fine. Opening a fist on the side of my body away from the horse drew him in, while opening a fist close to him sent him away. Fingers open stirred one response, fingers closed another. Hands above my head with fingers splayed provoked true panic....All this matters as the horse reads my body language and I red his....I can now enumerate about one hundred or more signs the horse will respond to.
Monty demonstrated his Join Up techniques on wild and unruly horses throughout America, even coming to the attention of Queen Elizabeth, a noted horse-lover. He gave the Queen several demonstrations and toured the British Isles to promote his gentle method. He even used his techniques to train wild deer and goats near his ranch, and got them to respond to his presence and instructions.
I really loved this book and was entranced by the man and his experiences on every page. He is such a great story-teller about a life full of adventure, observation, failures, and successes. I learned so much about horses and the "Equus" language Monty observed and was able to duplicate countless times for recalcitrant, untamed horses worldwide. He was a fearless rodeo rider, a dedicated husband and father, and a successful horse ranch designer and manager.
Truly, this is a man, a life, and a revolutionary technique worth reading about. Highest recommendation.
[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]
Hillenbrand, Laura. Seabiscuit: An American Legend
Wonderful, compelling history of the discovery, training, racing career and worldwide publicity of one of America's most-winning horses.
Happy reading.
Fred
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