Whispering Back (9 page)

The drive to and from Witney became an important part of the course in its own right. Dad had the car serviced, new tyres and brakes put on, and the eccentric electrics sorted out. He hadn’t been able to get the fan fixed, however, and this meant that to avoid the car overheating, I had to drive with the heater on full. This made it noisy and hot, so I’d drive along with the windows and sunroof open, music blaring away. It was pretty cold out on those frosty November mornings, and I got some very strange looks. I loved driving through the gently rolling countryside of Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, and there was still enough of the child in me not to get miserable about winter until after Christmas. My brain whirred constantly, mulling over the details of what I’d seen and heard, while the intense music seemed to echo what was happening in my life. Had my drive been shorter, I think I would have learned far less from the course.

Another memorable part of these journeys was an audio tape of Jonathan Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels
, which I had borrowed from the library, on Adam’s insistence that I fill in some of the literary gaps left by my ‘radical’ education. In the last section of the book, after his escape from the little men in Lilliput, and many other adventures, Gulliver arrives at an island ruled by horses, called Houhynhyms. So pure of thought and spirit, despite their advanced scholarship, they have no concept of, nor word for lying, simply calling it ‘to say the thing which was not’. The non-violent civilisation they have created would be perfect but for the presence of the human ‘yahoos’, who live and breed like vermin, exhibiting all the vices of mankind.

Increasingly, as I drove, I felt ashamed at what we have done to the world, not least to horses, and to each other. From the time of Swift, when horses were so universally enslaved for the use of man, to the present era, horses, still deeply misunderstood by so many people, seem to represent one of the last windows left open onto our rustic past. Our partnership with the horse has been at the centre of that nostalgic dream-idyll, blown aside by the relentless pace and mechanisation of our culture, but for which so many of us yearn. The simple lifestyle of a horse, the peace we find in their company (when we have time to feel it), their profoundly generous nature, point us to a more honest existence than our own.

During that first week of Nicole’s course we both attended Monty’s demonstration at Addington Equestrian Centre. Naturally I had been keen to see him in action, having been told so much about him. But, like the hundreds of people in the audience that night, I was astonished by what I saw. ‘It’s like magic,’ I said to Monty when we met him afterwards.

The first horse accepted his first saddle, bridle, long-lines and rider in half an hour. The last had previously taken hours to load, but was soon following Monty into a trailer without a lead rope. With Dually, his quarter horse, he also gave a demonstration of ‘cutting cattle’ (separating one out from the herd) without a bridle. Particularly impressive was the obvious enthusiasm of the horse as he went about this incredibly difficult task. I had no idea a calf could move so quickly, and change direction so sharply. Monty got his horse to cut the calf all by himself and was ‘just’ sitting there as he did so, without interfering. And all the while he kept up a monologue that had the audience spellbound.

Although I had never seen anything like this before, I could see immediately why he was able to make such an impact, and make better progress than any conventional horseman. As I’ve said, Monty doesn’t attempt to teach horses our language, he simply tries to use their own and he gives the horse confidence in his ability to take them through whatever problems they have. With a keen sense of discipline and great self-confidence, as well as an aura of unflappability and calm, he also has a ready response for whatever happens in the pen, which takes away any incentive for the horse to continue his unwanted behaviour. That night we saw how he created an environment in which the horse could easily learn. ‘There’s no such thing as teaching,’ he suggested, ‘only learning.’

Like so many of Monty’s sayings, it is no less relevant to life in general than to training horses.

All the time that I’d spent fighting the system at boarding school, I’d been vaguely aware that the rules and the way they were enforced pushed me into a corner. You either conformed or rebelled. There seemed to be no middle ground in which to establish your own personality. As a pupil, you were constantly lectured about being ‘responsible’, but were not given any real responsibility for your actions or choices. Instead, by means of near-constant supervision, the authorities tried to stop you from doing ‘wrong’ things, which made me, at least, want to do them so much more.

A perfect example of the reverse psychology Monty uses when starting a young horse is teaching it to go backwards. Conventional horsemanship would have you avoid ever asking a young horse to go back, thinking it might cause napping (refusing to go forward, or backing up without the rider’s control). This is a common problem in the UK, perhaps in part for this very reason. Monty’s explanation was typically deft:

A ripple of laughter went through the audience. But I was shocked by the gulf between my approach and Monty’s. I would never have allowed a horse the choice to go back if that’s what he decided to do. I would have tried to make him go forward. But the logic of Monty’s approach was so convincing. He would allow the horse to go back, but take all the benefit out of that behaviour by making him back up far more than he wanted to. When training a confirmed napper this might have meant backing up more than a quarter of a mile on the first day. But eventually the result would be that backing up came under the control of the rider, instead of being something the horse could do to evade the rider.

We had no idea how this man’s philosophy was going to change our lives, but it was an irresistible pull. It was fascinating, powerful, and above all, accessible. I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t learn to do the same things he was doing. And it didn’t just seem like a way to becoming a better horseman, but also a way towards becoming a better person. I thought of how I’d whipped Wilberforce to make him go through puddles, and was deeply ashamed at the thought of how cruel and pointless it had been. What kind of a leader had I appeared to him? Insensitive. Domineering. Stupid, violent and obstinate. All the things that I had so long ago resolved not to be, right back at school, and that I so loathed in other people. Mixed with revulsion at my own behaviour was anger that I had allowed conventional ‘wisdom’ to influence me, which would have me pick a fight, when it came down to it, ‘to show the horse who’s boss’. What right had I to hit a horse? What right had I to be the boss, if that was how I was prepared to enforce my authority? Perhaps my aggressive, catch-him-doing-something-wrong-and-punish-him-for-it attitude had taught Wilberforce who was boss, but it had probably also made him less likely to genuinely respect me or co-operate voluntarily with trust. And, if I could not motivate my horse to do things for me willingly, I would never get the most out of him. He would never want to go through water if I was beating, forcing or even just threatening him. In fact, next time he saw a puddle, he’d have a real reason to be scared of it. I couldn’t have known then how often I would find myself repairing the damage inflicted by others, phobias beaten into horses by people keen to teach them ‘who’s boss’.

I vowed at that demonstration never to use a whip again, not only so that I would never again be able to misuse one, but also because Monty had made me realise something fundamental both to horsemanship and every relationship in the world. If I needed to use force to get my horse to do something, then I should never have been asking him to do it. Common sense, perhaps, but as someone once said, common sense isn’t always common practice. Somehow I had not noticed that, when dealing with an animal weighing about eight times more than oneself, the
only
way you can work is with his consent. But I had often been demanding, petty, rude and harsh in how I got that agreement. It was given grudgingly, after sometimes spectacular scenes of dissent, which could have seen either one or both of us badly injured. It was like the political prisoner who signs his untrue confession in a gesture of consent – he picks up the pen, but only as a result of the tortures he has been subjected to, and which he knows will continue if he does not sign. Some horses, dogs, and humans never have a fair chance to do anything ‘right’ enough to avoid being punished. But surely the key is to avoid disagreement in the first place. The crucial ingredient was trust. And every time I hit a horse, or even threatened or thought of hitting him, I was doing so simply because I had no better method to get what I wanted, and had listened to some bad advice.

The results Monty achieved were magical, but the methods were logical, relying on a sound understanding and application of body language and psychology rather than force. Instead of getting a horse to do things, Monty was getting the horse to
want
to do them. I came away resolved to change the way I treated horses, having learned more valuable information about how to train horses in that one night than I had in all the years before.

As if the course wasn’t already the best thing I’d ever done in my life, it was also to give me the chance to meet two of my most inspirational horsewomen. Every Tuesday morning, we had a guest lecturer, an expert in their field, a top farrier, for example, or physiotherapist. The lectures were always interesting, adding another dimension to our understanding. I couldn’t believe my luck, however, when I discovered I was going to meet my childhood heroine, Lucy Rees, whose book had been so important in starting Sensi. Adam and I had once spent a most agreeable afternoon trying to visit her in Wales.

As if that wasn’t enough, Mary Wanless, ground-breaking riding coach and author, would also be lecturing. Reading Mary’s
Ride With Your Mind
books had already made a tremendous difference to my riding and I was able to disentangle myself from the disheartening struggle riding had become. Hearing her speak on the course was incredible. Here was someone who knew the biomechanics of what good riders actually do
and
how to teach it. To a non-rider this might not sound so remarkable, but it is incredibly rare to find these two things in the same person. Perhaps more astonishing is the fact that almost no one else in the horse world seemed even to recognise that this information was lacking. For years, it was acceptable to repeat the same worn-out, largely meaningless phrases, and when they didn’t work, say them louder before blaming either the pupil or the horse. So much of what I heard that morning related as much to life as to riding. Mary’s own story was an inspiring tale. She had come to horses comparatively late, not starting riding until the age of fourteen. She claims she was just an average rider, with no discernible talent, working her way through the system until she finally became a BHSI. At this stage, however, she hit a plateau, which two years of training with a top classical rider wasn’t able to get her through. She had got the job on the strength of a half-halt she’d ridden during the interview, which she was never able to reproduce in the two years she was with this trainer. This struck a deep chord with me, and I believe it’s typical of so many riders’ experiences – a brilliant moment, a sudden coming together of all that you’ve been striving for, a sudden ‘A-ha! I’ve got it!’ that turns out to be elusive. You haven’t got it after all, and the more you try to find it again, the further it slips away, disappearing perhaps for years. After two years of having the same commands barked at her, of trying her hardest, of being lunged late into the night, continually failing (she felt) her horse, her instructor, and herself, she gave up in despair and moved to London, supporting herself (more or less) by selling fire extinguishers.

Friends began to pester her for help with their horses, and financial desperation led her gradually back into the world of horses. But this time it was different. Distrustful of all the old ‘truths’, she approached her new learning in a thoroughly experimental manner. What if, she thought, I tried doing the opposite of what I’ve been told all these years? If what I’ve been doing for all this time hasn’t been working, I’ve got to try something else. She discovered to her astonishment that when, instead of relaxing and ‘going with’ the horse, she engaged all her muscles and tried to keep still and strong on the horse, she immediately became significantly more stable. Having achieved this, she was much more in control of her body and more able to influence the horse. If there was such a huge gap between what she was being told to do, and what actually worked, what did this say about the teaching that was going on? Was she actually being told to do the wrong thing, or was there a massive failure of communication? When her instructor said ‘sit up straight and stretch your legs down’ did he mean what she interpreted him to mean? Was it what he was really doing? It often seemed to work for him – that is, it had the desired effect on the horse – so there must be some ‘slippage’ of meaning in the communication. Of course, if ever he were struggling with something, then perhaps his understanding of the biomechanics was at fault.