Whispering Back (2 page)

It takes more than good intentions to make a good horse trainer. I often tell people who want to learn my methods that before they try to run, they must learn to walk, and before that, learn to crawl. This book tells the story of two young people doing just that, finding their way through the challenges of working with problem horses. Being among the first graduates of Kelly’s courses, they have been thrown in at the deep end, being asked to train horses that would test any horseman. Of course, there are mistakes and misjudgements along the way, but at the heart of their journey, as in mine, lies a burning desire to do what’s right for the horse.

It was my goal from the beginning to make the world a better place for horses and humans, and to apologise to Equus for the thousands of years of mistreatment and misunderstanding, which he has suffered at the hands of man. I hope that I have helped to do so. But I also know that for my contribution to make a lasting impact, I must rely on others taking my work on and bringing it to those who share the same convictions as myself.

Therefore I wish all the best to Nicole and Adam, for them to achieve continued success in their ventures with horses, and with this, their first book.

Monty Roberts

December 2002

It was one of those perfect summer days that English people never seem to mention as they set about the national tradition of complaining about the weather. I slung my kit bag into the car and looked out across the fields at our horses. Quietly grazing or dozing in the sunshine, they made a picture of absolute tranquillity. Consistency might not be the strongest point of our climate, but no country in the world could produce a finer day than this without clouds of insects to go with it. In any case, it would have taken more than a cloud in the sky to dent my good mood, for I was on my way to work with two of my favourite clients, Linda and Colin, a retired couple who like myself had recently moved to the West Country. I had worked for them before, with great results. This time, they wanted me to have a look at a retired schoolmaster called Rupert, who had a problem with tarpaulins and plastic.

Any horse owner knows that many horses have what seems to be an unnatural fear of plastic, and won’t go near it unless they learn that food is sometimes to be found in plastic bags. Monty Roberts’s autobiography,
The Man Who Listens to Horses
, includes the story of his first horse, Brownie, who had been phobic all his life about paper after Monty’s father had forced him to endure a practice known as ‘sacking out’. Having secured him to a strong post, Monty’s father had, over a period of several days, repeatedly thrown a paper sack over his back, in an effort to break his spirit of resistance to humans and to teach him ‘respect’ for the pressure of the rope restraining his head. It had left a scar so indelible that even though he owned him for many years thereafter, Monty was unable to persuade Brownie that it would never happen again, and the horse would worry at the slightest rustle of paper. This didn’t bode well. If the famous Monty Roberts couldn’t eradicate Brownie’s phobia, was there any way I would be able to cure Rupert of a similar fear?

When I arrived, Colin came to meet me and shook me warmly by the hand, but my heart sank when I saw Linda. Her face was creased with worry and her voice strained as she explained the origins of Rupert’s problem.

When he was four years old and only recently broken in, Rupert was being ridden back into the yard by his young owner. A tarpaulin was lying on the ground, and he had accidentally stepped on it. When his foot came down, making a sharp rustle, he suddenly spooked and shot forward, unseating his rider, who fell off. This was probably a good thing, because he galloped right across a cabbage field, and jumped a wall on the other side, landing in a heap on the road, where he slipped and fell over. He scrambled to his feet and stood panting, probably wondering where on earth that noise had come from, and why his rider had dismounted so gracelessly.

That might well have been the end of it, since many horses spook at such objects without developing a major problem about them. But this young girl’s father had been standing nearby and thought he’d teach Rupert a lesson, which indeed he never did forget. He strode across the field to where Rupert was still standing and, grabbing him by the bridle, dragged him back to the spot where the incident happened. Facing Rupert at the tarpaulin, he tried to pull him across it. When Rupert refused, the man twitched him, tightening a cord around the end of his nose so tightly that it bled. He forced him to stand on the plastic sheet, beating him so badly that for the next twenty-three years of his life, Rupert had refused to go near a tarpaulin, and was terrified of the sound of plastic. Although he was perfect in every other way, he resisted any effort to come to terms with the phobia that had been so mindlessly beaten into him. On one occasion, Linda had been persuaded by her instructor, an experienced horsewoman, that she could sort out his problem, and she proceeded to try to ride him forcefully over a tarpaulin using a whip, making him relive the trauma all over again. After this he was worse than ever.

‘I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing by asking you to work on this,’ she explained. ‘He’s retired so it’s not as if I have to worry about him spooking at a plastic bag in a hedge and running into the road with me. I just make sure that he never has to go near a tarpaulin. We keep all the plastic bags in the feed room so he doesn’t have to deal with his problem. It’s just he has such a terrible fear lurking at the back of his mind. He won’t be with us much longer, and I wish he could go to horse heaven without the unresolved memory of that terrible beating. But I’m worried that you’ll make it worse for him, like the last person who tried.’

I’d never before dealt with a horse who had a specific, deeply ingrained phobia about tarpaulin. I wasn’t exactly sure what my plan should be, but I knew that in the end, it would have to be Rupert’s choice. If he just couldn’t deal with it, and was getting more traumatised, I would have to stop, and leave him to live out his days without ever coming to terms with his fear, and the great injustice that had been done to him so long ago. I assured Linda that I felt exactly the same way as she did and would stop immediately if she wanted me to.

Colin and Linda had just constructed a huge outdoor arena, which was magnificent. Built of sand and rubber, it was perfectly flat and was surrounded by a high post and rail fence. They stood near the gate and Colin hid the tarpaulin I had brought with me while I led Rupert in. He was a handsome bay, about 15.2 hands high, with a kind eye. He seemed very relaxed and happy to be handled by a stranger, as if he hadn’t a care in the world. He had never been in the arena before, and although it had materialised right next to his paddock only a week or so before, he didn’t bat an eyelid as he walked in confidently, hardly bothering to sniff the ground. Obviously he had been in a few schools in his time, and knew the firm, crunchy sand was not, unfortunately, raw cane sugar. Even so, I walked him around it for a few minutes.

I was planning to do join-up, the method discovered by Monty Roberts, which uses body movements to communicate with a horse in his own language. The starting point is to give the horse the choice to stay with you or to move away. I let Rupert loose and walked away, inviting him to follow me. He broke away immediately and cantered off to the far side, hoping to find a way to get back to his friends in the adjoining field.

I was instantly reminded of why it is easier to do join-up in a 50-foot round pen than an Olympic-sized school, for within seconds Rupert seemed like a dot on the horizon, but as I had been trained to do, I sprinted after him, using assertive body language to tell him to keep moving away, since that was where he had decided to go. Leaving a trail of deep holes in the surface as he went, he reached the far corner of the school well before me and stopped briefly to tear a few chunks out of the pristine fence. I glanced across at Colin and Linda, whose faces bore a look of resigned stoicism. They’d known their new school wouldn’t stay perfect for ever, but perhaps they’d hoped it would last longer than two minutes!

Rupert was clearly determined to make me work hard for my money. Although, at the age of twenty-seven, he was old for a horse, he seemed to want to prove that he was still a few years younger than me. Not being outstandingly fit, I was soon out of breath, but Rupert was also beginning to have second thoughts about the wisdom of his policy of flight, as he was doing a lot more running than me, and it was only bringing more pursuit. Despite his attempts to evade me, he could not pretend I wasn’t there, for as far as I could in such a large space, I was asserting my authority over him by making him move in the direction I chose. As he ran up and down the fence I would sometimes block his movement and keep him away from the field, which seemed to make him focus on me a little. Then I began to see signs that he was starting to change his mind. First his inside ear began to flick towards me, as if to say, ‘I don’t know who you are but you’re clearly after me for something.’

He began to slow down, and seemed more regular in his movements, breaking into a canter less frequently and then settling down into a trot, which became increasingly steady. His flight instinct was beginning to subside and his head began to come down, as his adrenaline lowered. Finally he was walking, licking and chewing as his anxiety receded, so I changed my body language to mirror his. It was as if he was saying, ‘OK, I give up. Let’s just stop and eat, shall we?’ Or in Monty Roberts’s words, ‘If we could have a meeting to renegotiate this deal, I’d let you be the chairman.’ With his attention fully on me, I moved away from him, dropping my eyes and changing my stance completely, showing him my shoulder, to invite him to come over and join-up with me. He stopped, and it seemed as though the world stopped with him.

But off he went again, obviously thinking that was enough of a meeting. He’d still rather consult with his mates, although they hadn’t done much to help him, having continued to munch the grass on the other side of the fence, with only the occasional bored glance in our direction. OK, I thought, setting off after him again, with Monty’s words again ringing in my ears: ‘If you want to go away, then go away, that’s fine. But don’t go away a little. Go away a lot.’ I sent him off round the school for another minute or two. He was soon showing signs of regretting his decision and the moment he made the slightest effort to change his mind, I went back to my passive stance, looking down at the ground near him so I could still see what he was doing.

This time he did not run off, but stood and looked at me for a second before turning back towards his friends. When he did I immediately turned to him again, looking him in the eye and making a ‘tscch’ noise, which startled him and brought his attention back to me. Before he had even finished turning his head to look at me, I had already dropped my stance back to passive, in a much-practised move. He stared at me, responding as if caught by the hypnotic rhythm of an inaudible tune. I began to move in an arc around him, and he followed me with his head, looking at me with both eyes, until his feet finally had to move towards me. A tentative step or two in my direction, but then he moved off, and once again I explained my position: ‘Everything’s nice when you’re with me, everything’s tough when you go away.’ Finally he seemed to conclude that although I looked like a human, I was acting like a horse, communicating in the same way a horse would, and using exactly the same method another horse would to get him to accept me as his leader. He took another, hesitant step towards me and I rewarded him by remaining absolutely still for a moment, and then moving around him in a series of curves, gradually decreasing the distance between us until I was close enough to touch him. I gave him a gentle rub on the forehead and he relaxed further, licking and chewing, showing that he was happy to be with me of his own choice.