Back in the late 90s I dragged hubby to a Monty Roberts colt starting demo after hearing about him. We watched him join-up, gentle and saddle a 3 yr old horse that an anonymous owner brought in. He then put up a jockey who calmly walked and trotted the horse around. The process took about an hour total, with talking breaks to the crowd and to let the horse relax. I can’t speak to Monty’s life, the 40+ children he and his wife fostered or anything personal. All I know is he had a profound effect on the horsey (and non-horsey) people watching that there are kinder, more humane ways to treat horses (and people). For that evening, that’s the only message I took home - and it was positive. I didn’t hear any message that he was a saint or originator of these training methods - just that kindness worked so why not start there.
Not all that hard to believe.
People make up stories all the time.
Christian Gerhartsreiter?
Frank Abagnale (he’s even kind of meta–he made up stories about faking his identity as well as actually faking)
Anna Sorokin?
Catfishing ?
What bothered me about MR was that he had this reputation as being non-violent toward horses. That somehow he majickally “whispered” to them or whatever. I will not dispute the fact that his 2-year-olds were pretty damned broke before they went to the track to gallop. In my experience, they were started well and solid on the ground. It was when we presented them to the prospective buyers at the in-training sales that my young, naive self had some moments of realization.
The young horses got pretty annoyed and bored with being dragged out repeatedly and made to stand up and prick their ears and trot nicely around the little viewing area. So MR taught us to… how shall I word this… whack them on the end of their nose with the knotted end of the leather lead shank… so when we took them out and squared them up, all we had to do was barely wiggle our hand and they’d perk up and snort… for fear of being walloped again.
That’s just one example that sticks with me about the hypocrisy. There’s the public image and then what goes on behind the barn, where no one can see.
I don’t know who these people are, but my point was more specific to Monty’s origin story: Do you think it’s common for adult children to lie about having abusive parents (and thereby alienate themselves from their family) if nothing happened?
And what happened to the idea that we should believe victims of abuse?
I don’t know Monty; I have no way to prove whether he was or wasn’t abused. But my gut instinct is that something happened–something cruel and/or violent–in his childhood home. Sometimes childhood memories loom larger in a kids’ mind than for adults who were there–maybe the adults don’t remember or discount the events as mere “spankings” while for Monty they were traumatic.
In the documentary, Monty tells a story of how his family had to move and his beloved childhood pony was “disappeared.” Only later a groom told him his parents had sent it to the dogfood factory, which devastated Monty. It’s possible there is another side to the story–maybe the pony was sick and somehow the parents never told Monty–but it seems clear the event traumatized him to an extent he has never been able to let it go.
So far as his training methods are concerned, a behaviorist friend of mine sent this along to me awhile back:
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https://phys.org/news/2012-07-urge-rethink-monty-roberts-horse.html
That’s it? A nose bop? That’s the big behind-the-scenes reveal?
Quite a long time ago it was known among insiders that a certain champion show jumper (probably more than one, actually) would ‘secretly’, when only a few select employees were around to help, give horses a horrendously abusive session over jumps to instill in them a far greater fear of stopping, ever, than flinging themselves over anything. Jumps that were scary, jumps that were too big and they brought them down, anything. A horse became willing to risk itself and jump, than face the punishment for not jumping. Afterwards it was a week or more before the wounds and bruises were healed.
I thought you were about to deliver a story like that. If the nose bop was the worst thing, we are still on the good side of things that used to be more common, but unspoken, in the professional and amateur horse world. Things that today are getting pro riders cancelled and sent home from the Olympics. When in the not-too-distant past that was just the way things were (and still are, in some places).
That’s interesting–it characterizes Monty’s method as essentially pressure-release.
But I thought pressure-release was a “good” form of horse training? I remember watching our young “intuitive” trainer get involved with getting a horse into a trailer. Whereas the owner and older trainer had been using brooms and a lunge whip trying to get it in, the young trainer applied pressure on the lead rope, then released it as soon as the horse took a step forward. Repeat, repeat. It took about twenty minutes, but eventually the horse was in the trailer with no undue drama. --Was this not a good technique for the trainer to use?
I’ve seen many attempts at the Monty Roberts version of join up end in horses who were so exhausted they finally submitted.
I have used more of the Warwick Schiller type of join up, and none took that long. The only deviation I do is that I don’t want to horse to approach me. Just face with two eyes.
I find the whole thing generally conflicting, and will not use it on a horse who doesn’t need it. I eventually install “cruise control” on my horses, in that I expect them to continue at the gait I put them in without needing to be constantly harassed. That’s in direct conflict with the join up thought that when I stop adding pressure you stop and face. So I only use “formal” join up on horses that really, really need it.
It seems to be more common than one would think.
I clearly watch too much true crime stuff, but getting sympathy for their horrible upbringing is a pretty common thing for certain types of people.
as I recall the barn was repurposed as Japanese internment camp.
My late husband recalled many incidents were his father beat the crap out of him and his older 2 sisters. ‘A 70s belt with a huge buckle’ he and the oldest sister got a lot of ‘whippings’ the middle sister caused a few, and the other 2 siblings were ‘the babies’ 8 and 13 years younger than him. If you ask them, Hubby was lying about the beatings. His mother had some changing stories about the severity or reason.But all but the oldest sister claimed it wasn’t that bad.
So, did he lie?
Perspective is all.
My aunt was all in awe over the book, to me there were few revelations in there.
Like so many things, once the $$$ come into play things get iffy.
I had a mind-opening experience at a MR demo in 1997 or so. I’d been a horsey kid until I was about 13, when my parents didn’t want to pay for lessons anymore and so that was that. When I got married, my sweet husband had never even so much as stroked a horse’s nose before. At the time, I was just realizing that the yearning for horses had never gone away, and that a piece of me was missing without them.
Somehow I learned of a MR event coming up. We were in grad school, broke as can be, and I remember the price of tickets was dear, but my husband agreed to go as our spring break treat. He’s a good guy.
It was a packed, smallish arena. MR did his thing, narrating what was happening, and what was going to happen…and when it did, and the horse dropped its head, the energy in the place was unreal. It’d been silent, and then everyone gasped. People all around us - not just women - were teary. My husband and I were both deeply moved as well.
Weirdly, in the first horse’s demo, MR got a finger caught in a fast moving rope and snicked off one of his fingers. He jammed his hand into his vest and kept going, helping the horse and helper to get to a stopping point. The helper found his finger in the dirt. A hand surgeon happened to be in the audience. There was an intermission, then MR came back out and did the second horse with a bandaged hand. He apologized for not hanging around after the show for autographs…instead he went to the hospital and had his finger sewn back on. Wild.
Anyway. I understand that there’s a kind of gray cloud over him, or even a black cloud. That whole chasing a mustang documentary and the notion of the mustang “choosing” to be with him is hogwash. Yet I’m grateful to have seen his demo when I did. It reaffirmed, generally, that I knew there was a way to be intuitive with horses, and it helped move along the reawakening I was going through to get back to them, and the very personal importance that had for me.
The vast majority of the most disturbing claims about his father were lifted directly from the actual life experience of Buck Brannaman.
Wow, that is a shocking statement.
This link shows some of the interesting discrepancies in his book:
https://www.angelfire.com/stars2/runofthemillhorses/Liarliar.html
He’s also been known to cherry pick horses for his clinics, only the easy looking ones.
I remember watching an interview on the local news when he was in town, claiming that the book The Horse Whisperer was about him. Also showing stills from the movie of a horse bucking with the saddle on, claiming that it was obvious that the horse was in pain from the poorly fitting saddle. My eyeballs almost rolled into the back of my head.
a la Littauer.
The Faraway Horses was so hard to read 
I’m not versed in the various horse “prophets”, lol sorry. I just find that it translates well to riding where I don’t want to have to kick or cluck constantly. It comes from my western background, I think, more than anything. ‘I set the speed, you keep the speed. I will not hold your hand on this topic.’
I like horses that are taught to hold “their end” of a deal.
Littauer wasn’t so much a prophet as he was the person who introduced forward seat riding to the US.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Littauer
Oh, I do know some of his stuff then. A lot of it I don’t agree with lol. But if he taught cruise control, then yes on that!
Actually, it’s a version of “flooding”. The horse doesn’t really have a choice, or put another way, the ‘least-worse’ choice, and it leads to 'learned helplessness".
