Man Who Listens to Horses
- Book Review,
by Monty Roberts
Amazon.com
Monty Roberts is, as they say, the real horse whisperer--even if he does revile the last third of Nicholas Evans's romance. Yet Roberts also makes clear from the start that listening and close attention have more to do with gentling an animal than soi-disant whispering. As far as he's concerned, silent communication can "effectively cross over the boundary between human (the ultimate fight animal) and horse (the flight animal). Using their language, their system of communication, I could create a strong bond of trust. I would achieve cross-species communication." And achieve it he does. After one short session, he has even the wildest stallion nickering with ungulate abandon. Roberts's descriptions of "joining up," as he calls it with horses--as well as with the deer who cavort on his California farm like so many hyperintelligent Bambis--are inspirational in the best sense of the word. Surprisingly, though, it took him long years to persuade most of the humans in his life that pain and punishment are not the way to go. Indeed, the author expends many a page on past mistakes and disasters, familial and professional. Yet The Man Who Listens to Horses remains a powerfully positive document--and not just for Mr. Ed. Best of all, when it comes to his life's work, Roberts is far more practical than mystical. Instead of portraying himself as Equus's messiah, he'd rather share his hard-won knowledge. Having overcome years of rejection and ridicule, the author is certainly not short in the self-esteem department, as some passages in this book demonstrate. No matter. He always checks his ego before entering the corral.
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Read about the author.
From School Library Journal
YAABy the time he was seven years old, Roberts knew that he wanted to work with horses for a living. An experienced rider, competing in horse shows since age four, he began to understand how horses communicate by observing wild mustangs on the Nevada range. How he progressed from child rodeo star to horse trainer for Queen Elizabeth II is an inspiring story of quiet persistence in dealing with an abusive father, losing his first horse, and facing rejection and ridicule because of his unique, nonviolent training methods. Told in a matter-of-fact way, this narrative looks into the horse business from rodeo to racetrack as experienced by a "real-life horse whisperer." The appendix offers a guide to the join-up method of training that Roberts developed. Young adults will enjoy the story and gain insights into dealing with adults and following their dreams.ABetsy E. Pfeffer, Northern Virginia Community CollegeCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The New York Times Book Review, Maxine Kumin
The Man Who Listens to Horses is a riveting and inspirational story, easy to read and hard to put down.... Monty Roberts will soften you up, get you chewing and listening to his insights into equine behavior and make you marvel at the success of his spiritual quest.
From AudioFile
This title addresses the current interest in communication between animals and humans. Monty Roberts's amazing methods for schooling horses to accept saddle and rider were developed through his keen observation of how horses communicate in the wild. His determination to abolish the cruelty in the age-old "breaking" of horses and to break the abusive relationship within his own family inspires a passionate reading of his life and work. His Native American heritage and some of the rodeo circuit life give his voice a distinctive resonance that listeners will appreciate. R.F.W. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Kirkus Reviews
The surprisingly complex and lively memoir of a successful and influential horse trainer who helped pioneer nonviolent methods of breaking horses in. Some of the book's vigor and pace may have to do with the fact that Lucy Grealy (Autobiography of a Face, 1994) is the coauthor. The narrative begins in 1948 when Roberts, then 13, spent time studying wild horses in the Nevada desert. He applied what he learned there to radically new ideas about how wild horses could be trained and came to be an important figure in horse racing circles. His portrait of the business of breeding and training horses is frank and fascinating, but the book's most memorable passages cover the rodeos and horse business in the west as it was in the author's youth, and include a haunting portrait of his violent, racist father and of some of the other remarkable figures Roberts knew (including a young James Dean). Over and above everything, though, is Roberts's surpassing love for horses, captured here in his evocations of the horses he has trained over a career spanning four decades. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"The Man Who Listens to Horses will first break, then mend your heart.... A riveting and inspirational story.... Read it. Monty Roberts will make you marvel." -The New York Times Book Review
"Utterly engrossing.... For those who have ridden the high plains country, wide open, atop a horse in the full, mature glory of its strength, the only honest reaction after reading the book is to smile in warm agreement." -Michael Enright, The Globe and Mail
"Mesmerizing.... The kind of life-altering book you never want to finish." -San Francisco Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Review
"The Man Who Listens to Horses will first break, then mend your heart.... A riveting and inspirational story.... Read it. Monty Roberts will make you marvel." -The New York Times Book Review
"Utterly engrossing.... For those who have ridden the high plains country, wide open, atop a horse in the full, mature glory of its strength, the only honest reaction after reading the book is to smile in warm agreement." -Michael Enright, The Globe and Mail
"Mesmerizing.... The kind of life-altering book you never want to finish." -San Francisco Chronicle
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Book Description
"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. . . ."
From the Publisher
"His portrait of the business of breeding and training horses is frank and fascinating, but the book's most memorable passages cover rodeos and horse business in the west as it was in the author's youth, and include a haunting portrait of his violent, racist father and some of the other remarkable figures Roberts knew (including a young James Dean). Over and above everything, though, is Roberts' surpassing love for horses, captured here in his evocations of the horses he has trained over a career spanning four decades."
--Kirkus Reviews"This book is important reading for those interested in communication, particularly interspecies communication and linguistics."
--Publisher's Weekly"Monty Roberts' book The Man Who Listens to Horses has inspired me to the depths of my soul. Observing Monty's philosophy and method of working with horses and people is one of the most profoundly deep, awe-inspiring, and heart-opening experiences I've ever witnessed. I highly recommend this book to everyone."
--Jack Canfield, co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series
From the Inside Flap
"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. . . ."
From the Back Cover
"Riveting and inspirational . . . easy to read and hard to put down."
--The New York Times Book Review
"HERE IS A MAN WHO IS A REAL, LIVE HORSE WHISPERER. . . . Monty Roberts takes us from the moment he learned to listen to horses through the development of his skill at communicating with and 'gentling' them rather than breaking their spirits. . . . From those cold nights and blazing days in the desert, he would build a life anchored by his love and understanding of the horse."
--The Washington Post Book World
"ABSORBING . . . ENGROSSING . . . Roberts's story is more fascinating and profound than any told in fiction. . . . The kind of life-altering book you never want to finish."
--San Francisco Chronicle
"THE MAN WHO LISTENS TO HORSES has inspired me to the depths of my soul. . . . One of the most profoundly deep, awe-inspiring, and heart-opening experiences I've ever witnessed. I highly recommend this book to everyone."
--JACK CANFIELD
Coauthor of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series
About the Author
Monty Roberts has spent his whole life working with horses--schooling them, listening to them, and learning their ancient equine language. Roberts was first introduced to the American public on Dateline NBC.
He runs Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang, California.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Call of the Wild Horses
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.
In the wilderness of Nevada, the soil is silky and cool to the touch at dawn, and at midday will burn your skin. My summer vigils were marked off by the heat of the day and the cold of the night and a profound sense of solitude. It felt right to be there under those vast skies on that dove-gray moonscape in the company of wild and wary horses. I remember, especially, a dun mare with a dark stripe along her back and zebra stripes above her knees. Clearly the matriarch of the herd, she was disciplining an unruly young colt who had been roughing up foals and mares. I vividly recall how she squared up to him, her eyes on his eyes, her spine rigid, her head pointed arrowlike at the adolescent. No longer full of himself, he knew exactly what she meant. Three hundred yards from the herd, the outcast would know by her body position when he could return to the fold. If she faced him, he could not. If she showed him part of her body's long axis, he could begin to consider it. Before her act of forgiveness had to come signs of his penitence. The signals he gave back to her--the seeking of forgiveness--would later be fundamental to a technique I would develop to introduce young horses gently to saddle and rider. It was the mustangs who taught me their silent body grammar, and the dun mare was my first teacher.
I grew up in Salinas, California, where wild horses were annually put to other uses. In 1948, the Wild Horse Race was a featured part of the Salinas Rodeo. And because I lived in a house on the rodeo grounds (or competition grounds, as I called it) where my parents ran a riding school, rodeo was part of our lives. Normally, wild horses were cheap and plentiful. Doc Leach, a short, bespectacled man who was our dentist and also president of the association that governed the competition grounds, would have called the usual people and said, in effect, Come on, folks, I need a hundred and fifty mustangs to be delivered to Salinas by July the first and it would happen. But with horsemeat used so extensively during the war, mustang numbers had dwindled significantly, and by 1947 the herds in northern California, Nevada, and southern Oregon had diminished by as much as two-thirds, with the horses now located almost exclusively in Nevada. That year Doc Leach's calls had fallen on deaf ears. What mustangs? the Nevada ranchers had countered. You come up here and see if you can get them yourself. The wild horse race was usually no race at all but a kind of maniacal musical chairs played with mustangs, but that year the Salinas Rodeo Association had to scrape together what they could find, and so it was a fairly tame wild horse race, with too few horses and too many old ones to put on the show required.
The following year I saw an opportunity to provide Doc Leach with a service that would both salvage the reputation of the wild horse race and save the lives of a hundred or more horses. I was only thirteen; he might not listen. But I was driven by both a fierce young entrepreneurial spirit and my love of the horses. In previous years, after the rodeo, the mustangs were sent to Crows Landing to be slaughtered for dog food. If I could somehow make them worth more than that...
What if, I proposed to Doc Leach, I go to Nevada and get the mustangs? Doc Leach's eyebrows popped up above his glasses. How you going to do that, walk? No, I've made a lot of friends from trips to horse shows there. I know I can ask for help from the Campbell Ranch. Bill Dorrance, a remarkable horseman in his mid-fifties who would become my mentor, had contacts at the ranch and would make the arrangements. Ralph and Vivian Carter, good horse people and friends of the family, had business to conduct near there and had agreed to help. Finally, I had a truck driver lined up. Good for you, Doc Leach came back, a hint of mockery in his voice. I was, after all, little more than a boy. I'd ride up to the ranges with some of the day hands from the Campbell Ranch, and I bet I could secure one hundred and fifty head. Head of what? Chickens or horses? He had a sophisticated sense of humour. Strong and healthy mustangs, Dr. Leach. I explained to him that my younger brother, Larry, and I could care for them at the competition grounds until the rodeo was held. They'll be ready on the spot, with the pair of us on hand to see they're all right. Doc Leach shifted his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other and blinked a couple of times. That meant he was cogitating. Finally he asked, What's in it for you? I was thinking, sir, that after the rodeo Larry and I could break in the mustangs and maybe have an auction sale, so they'd be worth more than Crows bait. That was the euphemism for animals taken to Crows Landing for slaughter. This year, I told him, he would not have to send any animals to the abattoir. There'd definitely be more than a few that would go through the sale ring ridden by my brother or myself and maybe provide someone with a useful mount, sir. He was still cogitating, so I went on. And perhaps the rodeo association could show a profit at the end of the day, more than the slaughter value anyway. Doc Leach weighed the arrangement, turning it over in his mind. He was like the buyer of a used car, kicking the tires and looking for the hidden defect. When he could find none, he agreed.
He offered to call up Irvin Bray and contract him to provide me with transport for the return journey. Finally, we agreed that the net proceeds of any sales were to be divided equally between the rodeo association and the Roberts brothers.
I was on my way to Nevada to gather 150 head of mustangs. It would prove to be the most important opportunity of my life: to study horses in their natural groups, in the wild. For the next three years I would be crossing the Sierra Nevada to the high desert beyond, to live alongside wild herds for several weeks at a time. From that experience I would begin to learn a language, a silent language which I have subsequently termed Equus. With that as a springboard, I would assemble a framework of ideas and principles that would guide my life's work with horses. I would have none of this were it not for my time as a teenager spent in the company of mustangs.
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