Remembering ‘The Man Who Listens to Horses’

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Support and this message come from our 2026 lead sponsor of Fresh Air, Disney. What does it take to build a world people never want to leave? Hear from James Cameron, John Favreau, Kevin Feige, and more in director Leslie Iwerks' Disney World Builders, coming to Disney Plus on August 20th.

**David Bianculli** (0:18)
This is Fresh Air. I'm David Bianculli. Monty Roberts, the internationally acclaimed horseman who used trust instead of intimidation to train horses, died last week. He was 91 He defied the conventional method of breaking horses, something he watched his father do, and created his own gentler approach, known as join up. He based it on the nonverbal language horses used to communicate with each other. It was a language he observed as a teenager watching wild mustangs in the Sierra Nevada. Roberts was born in Salinas, California in 1935 He grew up around horses, could ride confidently at three, and by the time he was eight, said he spent ten hour days working with horses, competing on weekends. He became a champion rider, and was a stunt rider in about a hundred movies, including as a young boy, the Elizabeth Taylor film, National Velvet. He's trained thousands of horses, including wild horses, race horses, and problem horses. Roberts became internationally known after Queen Elizabeth II brought him to work with her horses in 1989
She supported his controversial general approach to horse training, and urged him to write his memoir, The Man Who Listens to Horses, which became a bestseller in 1996
Their 30-year friendship was the subject of the 2023 Andrea Nevins documentary, The Cowboy and the Queen.
From his California ranch, Monty Roberts introduced his techniques to horse owners, trainers and students from around the world. He also traveled widely giving demonstrations. Terry Gross spoke to Monty Roberts in 1997, shortly after his memoir was published. Roberts first learned about horses from his father, who ran a riding school at the massive Salinas Rodeo. But Roberts' father used pain and punishment to break horses.

**Monty Roberts** (2:18)
Well, I suppose you'd say my father was a very traditional horse trainer, working in the conventional manner. And the main concept is, you do what I tell you to, or I'll hurt you.
What it is, is that whether I hurt you a lot or a little, it's dealing with negative reinforcement. The use of pain or corporal punishment, acting out in violence, to train the animal not to do that thing that you're against or you're working to avoid.

**Terry Gross** (2:59)
So what approach to discipline and negative reinforcement did your father use?

**Monty Roberts** (3:05)
Well, he would tie legs up on horses and tie them down on the ground. He would tie them to posts and work in such a way so as to frighten them and cause them to test those tethers to the maximum degree which would bash them very violently. Oftentimes they were on the ground, oftentimes there was blood and there was injury.
It was all done in the vein that that's necessary to do, to break this horse. And break is a very good word. It's been used for about 6,000 years now to describe the procedures used to cause a horse to accept saddle bridle and rider and training, if you will.

**Terry Gross** (3:52)
What do you call your approach?

**Monty Roberts** (3:53)
Starting.
The approach itself is titled join up. But the procedure, I say starting the horse rather than breaking the horse because I don't use any pain or restraint. And I request that the horse do the things I want. I don't demand it. I ask the horse to do them so as to cause a state of mind whereby he wants to do them, not because he's forced to do them.

**Terry Gross** (4:24)
Your basic principle in training horses is to try to use horse language to communicate with the horses, to use horse behavior and horse language, which you learned from being with horses in the wild, which we'll get to in a few minutes. Describe your join up method of asking, basically asking the horse first to go away and to then join up with you.

**Monty Roberts** (4:46)
Yeah, well, it's their language and they use this business of sending the animal away, that is, they use it interspecies as well as intraspecies.
So they use this business of sending the animal away, isolation, rejection, as a discipline. And when that animal is out there, isolated, the flight animal, the animal who provides meat for the predator, is very concerned about that and they want to come back in the worst possible way. So that's the most severe punishment, that you can deal a flight animal.