Monty Roberts, Horseman Who Trained Through Trust, Dies at 91

Monty Roberts, the internationally acclaimed horseman who used trust rather than intimidation to train horses, died last week at 91, NPR's "Fresh Air" reported.

Roberts rejected the conventional method of breaking horses — a practice he had watched his father use — and developed his own gentler approach, known as join up. He based it on the nonverbal language horses use to communicate with one another, a language he first observed as a teenager while watching wild mustangs in the Sierra Nevada.

Born in Salinas, California, in 1935, Roberts grew up around horses and could ride confidently at 3. By the time he was 8, he said, he was spending 10-hour days working with horses and competing on weekends. He became a champion rider and worked as a stunt rider in about 100 movies, including, as a young boy, the Elizabeth Taylor film "National Velvet." Over his career he trained thousands of horses, among them wild horses, racehorses and problem horses.

He became internationally known after Queen Elizabeth II brought him to work with her horses in 1989. She supported his controversial gentle approach and urged him to write his memoir, "The Man Who Listens to Horses," which became a best seller in 1996. Their 30-year friendship was the subject of the 2023 Andrea Nevins documentary "The Cowboy and the Queen." From his California ranch, Roberts taught his techniques to horse owners, trainers and students from around the world, and traveled widely to give demonstrations.

Speaking with Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" in 1997, shortly after the memoir was published, Roberts described his father as "a very traditional horse trainer, working in the conventional manner," whose central idea was: "You do what I tell you to, or I'll hurt you."

He said his father would tie horses' legs up and tie them to the ground or to posts, frightening them until they tested the tethers. "Oftentimes, they were on the ground, oftentimes there was blood, and there was injury," Roberts said. "It was all done in the vein that that's necessary to do to break this horse."

Roberts said he preferred the word "starting" to "breaking." "I don't use any pain or restraint, and I request that the horse do the things I want. I don't demand it," he told Gross.

Join up, he explained, borrows the horse's own vocabulary. Sending an animal away — isolation and rejection — is the harshest discipline for a flight animal, because a horse alone is vulnerable to predators. "The isolated grazer or flight animal is smorgasbord for the lion or the tiger or the grizzly bear," he said. Aggressive signals such as piercing eye contact, squared shoulders and open, extended fingers drive the horse away; once it has gone its flight distance, it begins to signal that it wants to return.