I’ve always liked animals, so I was intrigued by an article about horse trainer Monty Roberts.
Monty has discovered a way to communicate with horses, and uses it to train them gently and without violence. When watching wild horses as a boy, he realized they were communicating silently with each other. He was able to learn this language and develop a training method he calls Join-Up®, as in forming a connection between a person and a horse in which the two communicate in silence and as equals. He could be considered the original (and real) horse whisperer.
He has written a book, The Man Who Listens to Horses, (still in print at http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=man+who+listens+to+horses) and has a website explaining his methods (http://www.montyroberts.com/).
I wish I would’ve know about this 50 years ago. My grandfather bought me a pony, which seemed like a good idea at the time because we lived on a farm. But unbeknownst to us, it was being trained to race and was far too high-spirited for me. I rode it once, and then it has a very long life of leisure. It’s a shame we didn’t have access to information like this at that time.