The Dog Listener: Learning the Language of your Best Friend. Monty Roberts
barge its way in front of you as you walk to a door because it is checking the coast is clear, protecting the den, and believes it is the leader.
I also understood and accepted the idea of what was referred to as ‘separation anxiety’. The behaviourists’ view was that a dog will chew up the furniture or destroy the home because it is separated from its owner and that separation is stressful for the dog. All these things made total sense and offered me a lot. But to me there was something missing. What I kept asking was: why? Where was the dog getting this information from? At the time I wondered whether I was crazy for even asking myself this, but why is a dog so dependent on its owner that it is stressful to be separated? I didn’t know it then, but I was looking at the situation the wrong way around.
It is not an understatement to say that my attitude to dogs – and my life – changed one afternoon in 1990. By this time, I was also working with horses. The previous year, a friend of mine, Wendy Broughton, whose former racehorse, China, I had been riding for some time, had asked me if I was interested in going to see an American cowboy called Monty Roberts. He had been brought over by the Queen to demonstrate his pioneering techniques with horses. Wendy had watched him give a demonstration in which he had brought a previously unsaddled horse to carry saddle, bridle and rider within thirty minutes. It was, on the surface at least, highly impressive but she remained sceptical. ‘He must have worked with the horse before,’ she thought. She was convinced it had been a fluke.
In 1990, however, Wendy had been given the chance to put her mind at rest. She had answered an advert Monty Roberts had placed in Horse & Hound magazine. He was organizing another public demonstration and was asking for two-year-old horses that had never been saddled or ridden before. He had accepted Wendy’s offer to apply his method to her chestnut thoroughbred mare, Ginger Rogers. In truth, Wendy saw it as a challenge rather than an offer. Ginger Rogers was an amazingly headstrong horse. Privately we were convinced Monty Roberts was about to meet his match.
As I travelled to the Wood Green animal sanctuary near St Ives, Cambridgeshire, on a sunny, summer’s afternoon, I tried to keep an open mind, not least because I have immense respect for the Queen’s knowledge of animals, her horses and dogs in particular. I thought if she was giving credence to this fellow then he had to be worth watching.
I suppose when you hear the word ‘cowboy’, you immediately conjure up images of John Wayne, larger-than-life characters in Stetsons and leather chaps, spitting and cursing their way through life. The figure that emerged before the small audience that day could not have been further removed from that cliché. Dressed in a jockey’s flat cap, wearing a neat, navy shirt and beige slacks, he looked more like a country gentleman. And there was nothing brash or loud about him. In fact he was very quiet and self-effacing. But there was undoubtedly something charismatic and unusual about him. Just how unusual, I would soon find out.
There were about fifty of us sitting around the round pen he had set up in the equestrian area. Monty began by making some opening remarks about his method and what he was about to show. The early portents were not good, however. Unknown to Monty, Ginger Rogers was behind him. As he spoke, she started nodding her head slowly, almost sarcastically pretending to agree with him. Everyone burst out laughing.
Of course when Monty turned around, Ginger stopped. The minute he swivelled round to face the audience again she started again. Wendy and I looked at each other knowingly. We were both thinking the same thing I’m sure: he’s taken on too much here. As Monty gathered up a sash and began going through the opening of his routine, we sat back waiting for the fireworks to begin.
Precisely twenty-three-and-a-half minutes later we were ready to eat our words. That was how long it took Monty not just to calm Ginger down but also to have a rider controlling with ease a horse that to our certain knowledge had never been saddled or ridden in its life. Wendy and I sat there in stunned silence. Anyone who saw us that day would have seen disbelief written all over our faces. We remained in a state of shock for a long time afterwards. We talked about it for days and days. Wendy, who had spoken to Monty after his miraculous display, even went on to build a replica of his trademark round pen and started implementing his advice.
For me too it was as if a light had been switched on. There were so many things that struck a chord. Monty’s technique, as the whole world now knows, is to connect – to ‘join up’ in his phrase – with the horse. His time in the round pen is spent establishing a rapport with the horse, in effect communicating in its own language. His method is based on a lifetime working with and most importantly observing the animal in its natural environment. Most impressive of all his method has no place for pain or fear. His view was that if you did not get the animal on your side then anything you did was an act of violation, you were imposing your will on an unwilling being. And the fact that he was succeeding in doing things differently was clear from the way he won the trust of the horse. He placed great store, for instance, on the fact that he could touch the horse on its most vulnerable area, its flanks. That day, as I watched him working in unison with the animal, looking at and listening to what the animal was signalling to him, I thought ‘he’s cracked it’. He had connected with the horse to such an extent that it let him do whatever he liked. And there was no enforcement, no violence, no pressure: the horse was doing it of its own free will. I thought how the heck can I do this with dogs? I was convinced it must be possible given that dogs are fellow hunter-gatherers with whom we have a much greater connection historically. The big question was: HOW?
Chapter 3
I realise now that fortune was smiling on me at this time. If I had not begun expanding my own pack of dogs, I am sure I would never have seen what I did. By this time my pack was reduced to a quartet of dogs: Khan, Susie and Sandy, and a beagle I had taken in, called Kim. They were a fun foursome, a wonderful mixture of characters. By now, however, I was entering another new phase in my life. I had no ties, the kids were grown up and I had just lost my parents. Free to think about what I wanted to do, I decided to welcome a beautiful, black German shepherd puppy called Sasha into my home.
I had always liked the idea of owning a German shepherd even though they’re a breed that has had a bad press. People see them as police dogs, aggressive animals that are always attacking people, which is, of course, far removed from the truth. We stereotype dogs just the same way as we pigeonhole people. All German shepherds are aggressive, all spaniels are stupid or all beagles are wanderers – we have all heard it. Yet it is just as ignorant as saying all Frenchmen wear berets or all Mexicans walk around in sombreros: it is nonsense. My reluctance to take on a German shepherd was nothing to do with this. I quite simply didn’t think I was good enough to work with this kind of dog. I had heard a lot about their immense intelligence, about how you have to challenge their brains, give them something to think about. I always felt I didn’t have the time, the patience and certainly the knowledge to handle one. Now, perhaps, I did.
Sasha’s arrival in my home marked a major turning point. After watching Monty in action, I knew that I had to follow his example and observe very closely what my dogs were doing. I had to stop thinking I knew best and start watching them. As I did so, the benefits were not long in coming. Sasha was a young and incredibly energetic dog. My other dogs reacted to this exuberant new presence in different ways. The beagle, Kim, would simply ignore her. Khan, on the other hand, was quite content playing with the newcomer. He did not mind at all that Sasha would follow him everywhere, sticking like glue day and night. It was Sandy, my son Tony’s cocker spaniel, who had the problems.
From the moment Sasha arrived in the house, Sandy made it plain that she hated this newcomer. Sandy to be fair was getting on, she was twelve years old by now, and she simply didn’t want this energetic young kid leaping all over her. At first she tried ignoring her by turning her head from side to side, which was sometimes difficult because Sasha at the age of ten weeks was bigger than Sandy. When this didn’t work she began making this low grizzling sound and curling her lip so that Sasha would back off.
As I sat down and wondered about what was going on here I realised it was something I had seen before in another dog of mine,