A Year of Horse Books: The Man Who Listens To Horses by Monty Roberts - reviewed by Katherine Roberts
The Man Who Listens To Horses by Monty Roberts The Man Who Listens To Horses is part autobiography, part equine training manual. It details Monty Roberts' upbringing in the tough world of cowboys and rodeo competition. From a very young age, the boy Monty was entering rodeos and winning prizes on horses his father had 'broken' (i.e. trained using the traditional and rather brutal cowboy method of the time). These days, we tend to talk more of 'backing' or 'starting' a young horse under saddle, which involves winning the horse's trust rather than using force and fear to produce results. As he grew up watching his father and the other cowboys work, Monty began to suspect that young horses could be trained more quickly and better by speaking their language... the non-verbal language of Equus. To develop his new technique, he followed and observed groups of mustangs in the wild, noting how the herd was always led by a mare who was responsible for disciplini...