The horse whisperer and NH

[Cherokee]

I have just recently watched the 'Horse Whisperer' which i thought was a great film but I must admit i found one aspect of NH which they showed quite distressing.It was the part when Tommy tied Pilgrim leg to himself and then made him canter around the round pen.The horse was jumping and hopping everywhere and looked quite scared.

I do not know anything about NH and i am sure there was a good reason for this but I personally did not like it all.I am not trying to criticise NH or trying to start a debate , I would just like someone to explain to me why tommy did this to pilgrim.

Thankyou

Lucy

[Skib]

Can't answer your question absolutely, but OH has been watching that video pretty intently for its pictures of Montana so it has been on my mind.

The riding consultant for the film (and the book) was Buck Brannaman, and he has a chapter on how the film was made in his book. The Faraway Horses and the Story of the Real Horse Whisperer . Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 2004. (paperback).
You were quite right to ask this question. As a film maker's aim is to make us believe that what we are watching is real.
But a film is not reality. Making a film is complex. In this case, first you had a British writer write a book about a Western horse trainer. His knowledge of NH was not profound and he relied on Brannaman and others for the information. Then Paul Newman took the book and altered it to make a film of it. Brannaman says that some of the horse scenes shot for the film were then not used in order to build up the drama. Similarly (as far as I can remember as I don't own the book of the Horse Whisperer,) the book showed the injured girl going through a much more gradual process of learning to ride again with the help of the boy, than one gets in the film.
So the film holds an audience by creating a drama. It does this deliberately by showing a more extreme situation than you might find in real life, and extreme remedies that might possibly be used by someone like Brannaman to deal with a horse when all else had failed and the only alternative was for a vet to put the horse down.
I dont know enough about Brannaman's work as a trainer to comment further, but if you are interested in the NH advice he gave both to the novellist and the film maker you can read about it in his book.

[Cherokee]

Thanks Skib :D

[Crystal Fire]

This came up on another forum and I've been searching frantically for my Buck B book to find the quote. It is called The Faraway Horses by the way. I think in brief that for a trainer like Buck (on whom the book was based) laying a horse down is quite a last resort thing. I probably won't get this quite right, but normally horses behave in extreme ways like the horse in the film because they are afraid. Horses tend to get afraid when they think they might die. After other ways of getting the horse to trust that it isn't going to die, then it might be laid gently down. The trainer then stays with it and strokes all over it's body, talks to it, and then lets it back up. The horse has been through the worst that could happen - being laid down ready to eat by the person - but has found that it could be with the person and still live.
I know some trainers make a habit of laying all horses down as part of some sort of gentling process, but I'm sure Buck doesn't.
I love Buck's attitude to the horses. He says something to the effect of - when asked why he does what he does with the horses - "Just because I love them".
(p.s. Who's got my Buck book? I think I've lent it and it's not come back!! :( )

[Cochise]

I know next to nothing about NH to answer your question on that side of things. But from a narrative perspective on film, it was purely to represent the fact that the horse was "ashamed" of not being brave, and of his owner losing her leg. Tom did this so that Pilgrim would learn what it was his rider was going through only having one leg. I do feel that it's one of those typical narrative techniques of tying the horse and rider together for that "special bond." It's not dissimilar to the scene in LotR TTT when Aragorn "tames" Brego, and Brego seeks him out to carry the injured Aragorn home. :p

[Yann]

Making a horse go round on 3 legs is not an 'NH' technique I've ever come across before, and I can't honestly think of a reason you'd actually want to do it or what it would achieve, other than to scare the horse. I know in the bad old days cowboy horse breakers used to do similar things, but they certainly weren't 'NH'. That's not to say that some NH isn't sometimes rough with horses though.

[Crystal Fire]

I think that was some of the "poetic licence" in the film Yann. I think what they do is lift a leg with one hand, and rock the horse until they go down, quite like they would in the field. There is a bit of work goes on before to make that possible, none of this is shown in the film really.
Oh blimey - bed time!

[Harry Hobbes]

It is also difficult to imagine today the degree of brutality with which all horses, but especially working horses were often treated in John Rarey's time. It was not unusual for horses to be literally worked to death in harness or beaten senseless by indifferent handlers who did not know or care about a better way. Rarey championed a very different approach where kindness, firmness, and patience were mixed in equal measure. Even though the horse was put through considerable exertion during Rarey's taming, and may have had a few scrapes or bruises to show for it, there was no violence, no anger, no injustice.

John Rarey's methods, effective though they were for him, are far too difficult and dangerous for most modern horsemen to use. Rarey was a superb athlete, fearless, persistent, and patient. He also had the benefit of experience, having applied his methods to hundreds of difficult horses over the years.

The methods of Rarey are also largely unnecessary today, as few of us own truly savage horses and virtually no one must rely on such a horse for transportation or work. Horses as incorrigible as those tamed by Rarey were often one step away from being sold for slaughter.

Without an appreciation for the context or subtlety of Rarey's work, one could easily conclude that he was excessively rough or forceful with horses. Throwing a horse was generally reserved for the toughest equine customers and could therefore be considered the most drastic of the immobilization techniques. Still, on most horses, it was a rather anticlimactic procedure. The horse came to no physical harm and the psychological transformation could be remarkable.

When it was filmed for the movie The Horse Whisperer, the procedure was deemed so dull to watch that it required a whole arsenal of special effects to make it work on-screen. According to Buck Brannaman, the horse-training consultant for the film, the actor horse was wetted down to appear sweaty and bushels of fine powder were used to simulate flying dust. Multiple camera angles, slow-motion photography, dramatic music, and creative sound effects gave the procedure a completely different feeling and made it finally worthy of being the climax of one of the story lines. That cinematic magic misrepresented this classic gentling technique did not escape Brannaman, but it was a minor battle lost, and the movie was a major victory in the promotion of natural horsemanship.

In spite of his international celebrity—or perhaps because of it—John Rarey made an easy target for criticism. (Emphasis added.)

From The Revolution In Horsemanship: And What It Means To Mankind, by Robert M. Miller D.V.M and Rick Lamb. The Lyons Press; page 195.

[Skib]

Cochise
Thank you for that astonishing literary perception about why the makers chose that unlikely method. Obvious, now you've mentioned it but so OTT from the NH perspective that it hadnt occurred even to me!

[Cochise]

Cochise
Thank you for that astonishing literary perception about why the makers chose that unlikely method. Obvious, now you've mentioned it but so OTT from the NH perspective that it hadnt occurred even to me!

Oh gosh, it's what I've spent the last 3 and a half years at university doing! Reading into films and literature using psychoanalysis and semiotic theory. :)

[cvb]

OK <deep breath>

I have SEEN this sort of technique practised - by a visiting US trainer, in UK - in the 1990's.

It was a pony that was on its last chance, but I never ever want to see anything like that again, and voted with my feet.

Lying the horse down was only one the techniques used. This person also tied the horse's head to his tail, so that unless he turned his head quite sharply he was under pressure from one or t'other.

This is similar to the technique of teaching a horse to tie-up by tying it to a massive great pole and letting it fight it out. (This technique can lead to the horse breaking its neck :eek: )

I believe the idea is that the horse is fighting itself, not the human, and only has to learn to yield. In the situation I saw, the horse went crazy and almost came out through the walls of the round pen :(

Lying the horse down is a dominance thing. There is a theory that the horse "prepares itself to die" as it is the most vulnerable there. I seem to recall something about the hormones released it such a state pretty much making the horse catatonic - hence they seem pliable and "tamed".

What I witnessed all those years ago may well have saved that horse from the dog food factory (and no I am NOT going to say where I saw this, as the people are still there and appear to have seen the light since). But I suspect it was us humans that got this horse into the state it was in in the first place :(

There is a phrase in something I read recently. "As gentle as possible, and as firm as necessary". This trainer also claimed to only use "necessary" force - I guess we just differ big time on what we see as "necessary"....

<shudder>

[jinglejoys]

cvb--you say the horse was on its last chance---did it work?

[cvb]

What I know is that there were repeated sessions over a series of days. It took something like 5 hours the first day to get this little horse to yield at all. Second day it was slightly shorter. Third I think shorter again. They did get the horse saddled and a rider up. So in theory you could say this "worked".

But I can't comment if this worked in the long term, as I didn't stick around as I was deeply uncomfortable with what was going on.

And what sort of horse you ended up with...

There's something Pat Parelli says about folk saying they don't have time to practice getting something right, and he says "yeah, but they do have time to do it wrong time after time after time".

At the end of the day, if this little horse had had the time and attention paid to him in the very beginning, it is highly likely he would not have ended up in Last Chance Saloon :(

His "next to one" to last chance was being sent to another (UK) trainer to be backed. He jumped out of the stable and injured himself - the trainer sent him home as unmanageable. Of course there was a series of events which got him to that stage as well.

[Chablis]

It was a bit sad that important parts where cut out of the movie but I guess it's wasn't a horse documentary as such but a money making film purely based on drama... some parts of the film horrified me but non-horsey people probably assumed that it was normal to use those techniques and not got really worried about it.

I found the book was a lot better and was disappointed in the film after reading the book.

There are a lot of films where horses are used and the techniques used leave me cold, generally horses are not the main feature and/or it's not directed at horse savvy people.

There is a lot of clueless people around(I was only walking her online) doing 120kms on a narrow, rural road where native animals/horses/cattle often are about!

The horse people slowed down and flashed cars coming the other way to let them know I was there, the others just sped up! Oh and beeped their horns etc.

[Jacquie]

Lying the horse down was only one the techniques used. This person also tied the horse's head to his tail, so that unless he turned his head quite sharply he was under pressure from one or t'other. <shudder>

:eek: OMG cvb that's absolutely awful.....is this so called trainer still around?? :mad:

[cvb]

:eek: OMG cvb that's absolutely awful.....is this so called trainer still around?? :mad:

Jacquie

No idea. He was over from the US. I did a quick google, just to see, and IF I remembered the name right (I blotted a lot of this from my memory), the last reference I could find was in 2000.

I can't really say too much as it IS my personal opinion and the place is still there, but now with "real" NH trainers visiting on a regular basis. For all I know, they were also appalled but were in a difficult position as "hosts".

[Jacquie]

Jacquie

No idea. He was over from the US. I did a quick google, just to see, and IF I remembered the name right (I blotted a lot of this from my memory), the last reference I could find was in 2000.

cvb, can you pm me his details please?

[chev]

This is similar to the technique of teaching a horse to tie-up by tying it to a massive great pole and letting it fight it out. (This technique can lead to the horse breaking its neck :eek: )

Which I have seen happen. And never, ever, want to see again.

One of mine still has huge issues (both mental and to a degree physical still) from the self same technique.

The thing that most scared me about that film was not how the scene was engineered, or whether the horse was truly distressed (because I did feel it was unlikely given the laws in place protecting animals during filming now) but the fact that there are a huge number of people who will have watched that... and think they have learnt something.

Swinging (technique to teach horses to tie described by cvb) is still a very common method here. I don't think it would take much for some to decide that if tying a leg up worked in a film it would be worth trying on their horse. :(