Horse whisperer Monty Roberts gallops into the sunset
· Citizen
Monty Roberts, the renowned American horse trainer who died at the weekend aged 91, was a man for his time.
As the role of horses moved from the workplace to the recreational barn in the 20th century, Roberts and his methods reflected the mood and sentiment of the age, introducing gentler, kinder ways of getting horses to co-operate with humans.
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What impressed people most was his remarkable success with problem animals. Today, skittish thoroughbreds throughout the world are calmed by the application of the ubiquitous “Monty Roberts blanket” at the start of races.
Other standout moments in a long life were working as a stunt double and riding instructor – while still a child – for actors Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean and buying and selling (for a big profit) a reject yearling called Alleged, who went on to win the Prix de la Arc de Triomphe twice in the late 1970s.
In latter years, Roberts worked regularly in the areas of youth discipline and business corporate strategy, often integrating real-life horses into his demonstrations.
Millions of horsey folk in all equine disciplines – most famously the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II – were and are fans of Roberts’s “join-up” method of controlling horses, which he said used a secret, soundless language called “Equus”.
In a best-selling autobiography The Man Who Listens to Horses: The Story of a Real-Life Horse Whisperer, Roberts wrote of how he learnt this language as a teenager by closely observing wild horses’ behaviour when he was a wrangler rounding up mustangs in Nevada.
The key idea of join-up, which has evolved into an international practice known as “intelligent” or “natural” horsemanship, is recognising that horses are herd animals, always seeking a herd leader. The trick is to assume some of that leadership role and win a horse’s trust and develop a spirit of co-operation with the creature.
History
Monty Roberts was born in California in 1935, the son of a horse trainer, and was an expert rider by the age of four, winning local rodeo trophies.
He obtained a degree in animal science before spending years working on and running stud farms in California. From 1973 to 1986, he was a leading consignor to the Hollywood Park Two-Year-Old Thoroughbreds in Training Sale.
One of the first people to recognise Roberts’s extraordinary talent was the Jacobs racing family of Germany and South Africa. On Sunday, Dr Andreas Jacobs of Main Chance Farms in Western Cape penned a tribute to the American in Sporting Post, saying: “Dear Monty, thank you for your friendship, your wisdom and your generosity. We will remember you always – not only as one of the greatest horsemen of our time, but as a loyal friend who changed our lives and the lives of so many horses for the better.”
Jacobs related how his grandfather Walther invited Roberts to Germany, before the man became famous, to work with the great Lomitas, whose racing future was uncertain because of his refusal to enter starting stalls – even lying down on the turf before the German 2000 Guineas rather than going near the mechanical contraption.
“With endless patience, remarkable empathy and his unique ability to communicate with horses, Monty earned Lomitas’s trust … Lomitas returned to racing, resumed his winning career and went on to become one of the finest racehorses in German thoroughbred history,” wrote Jacobs.
“He later became an internationally influential stallion whose descendants continue to make their mark around the world. That remarkable experience marked the beginning of a friendship that lasted for more than three decades.”
For more than 30 years thereafter, Roberts returned to Gestüt Fährhof stud each summer to work with yearlings – and in 2016 he was in South Africa to run the rule over Maine Chance and then champion stallion, and son of Lomitas, Silvano.
Rave articles, live demonstrations and TV documentaries proliferated, bringing Roberts to the attention of Her Majesty, who invited him over to Windsor to show her horse staff how he did it. She encouraged him to write books – which he did – conferred on him a royal honour and named one of her favourite corgis Monty.
In its obituary, Britain’s Racing Post quoted Newmarket trainer Ilka Gansera-Leveque, who studied under Roberts: “He really understood horses and I learned how to speak to horses non-verbally. He packaged Western horsemanship into something for everybody to understand.
“He was a cowboy, a regular, down-to-earth, straight-shooting kind of guy. It was all about the horse for him.”
Unsurprisingly, Roberts was a firm opponent of the use of the whip in racing and once said: “One day it’ll all be whip-free, because we’re brighter than that. Whipping a flight animal to make it run faster is stupid. It can’t be right.”