The first horse accepted his first saddle, bridle, long-lines and rider in half an hour. The last had previously taken hours to load, but was soon following Monty into a trailer without a lead rope. With Dually, his quarter horse, he also gave a demonstration of ‘cutting cattle’ (separating one out from the herd) without a bridle. Particularly impressive was the obvious enthusiasm of the horse as he went about this incredibly difficult task. I had no idea a calf could move so quickly, and change direction so sharply. Monty got his horse to cut the calf all by himself and was ‘just’ sitting there as he did so, without interfering. And all the while he kept up a monologue that had the audience spellbound.

Although I had never seen anything like this before, I could see immediately why he was able to make such an impact, and make better progress than any conventional horseman. As I’ve said, Monty doesn’t attempt to teach horses our language, he simply tries to use their own and he gives the horse confidence in his ability to take them through whatever problems they have. With a keen sense of discipline and great self-confidence, as well as an aura of unflappability and calm, he also has a ready response for whatever happens in the pen, which takes away any incentive for the horse to continue his unwanted behaviour. That night we saw how he created an environment in which the horse could easily learn. ‘There’s no such thing as teaching,’ he suggested, ‘only learning.’

All the time that I’d spent fighting the system at boarding school, I’d been vaguely aware that the rules and the way they were enforced pushed me into a corner. You either conformed or rebelled. There seemed to be no middle ground in which to establish your own personality. As a pupil, you were constantly lectured about being ‘responsible’, but were not given any real responsibility for your actions or choices. Instead, by means of near-constant supervision, the authorities tried to stop you from doing ‘wrong’ things, which made me, at least, want to do them so much more.

A perfect example of the reverse psychology Monty uses when starting a young horse is teaching it to go backwards. Conventional horsemanship would have you avoid ever asking a young horse to go back, thinking it might cause napping (refusing to go forward, or backing up without the rider’s control). This is a common problem in the UK, perhaps in part for this very reason. Monty’s explanation was typically deft:

We had no idea how this man’s philosophy was going to change our lives, but it was an irresistible pull. It was fascinating, powerful, and above all, accessible. I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t learn to do the same things he was doing. And it didn’t just seem like a way to becoming a better horseman, but also a way towards becoming a better person. I thought of how I’d whipped Wilberforce to make him go through puddles, and was deeply ashamed at the thought of how cruel and pointless it had been. What kind of a leader had I appeared to him? Insensitive. Domineering. Stupid, violent and obstinate. All the things that I had so long ago resolved not to be, right back at school, and that I so loathed in other people. Mixed with revulsion at my own behaviour was anger that I had allowed conventional ‘wisdom’ to influence me, which would have me pick a fight, when it came down to it, ‘to show the horse who’s boss’. What right had I to hit a horse? What right had I to be the boss, if that was how I was prepared to enforce my authority? Perhaps my aggressive, catch-him-doing-something-wrong-and-punish-him-for-it attitude had taught Wilberforce who was boss, but it had probably also made him less likely to genuinely respect me or co-operate voluntarily with trust. And, if I could not motivate my horse to do things for me willingly, I would never get the most out of him. He would never want to go through water if I was beating, forcing or even just threatening him. In fact, next time he saw a puddle, he’d have a real reason to be scared of it. I couldn’t have known then how often I would find myself repairing the damage inflicted by others, phobias beaten into horses by people keen to teach them ‘who’s boss’.

I vowed at that demonstration never to use a whip again, not only so that I would never again be able to misuse one, but also because Monty had made me realise something fundamental both to horsemanship and every relationship in the world. If I needed to use force to get my horse to do something, then I should never have been asking him to do it. Common sense, perhaps, but as someone once said, common sense isn’t always common practice. Somehow I had not noticed that, when dealing with an animal weighing about eight times more than oneself, the only way you can work is with his consent. But I had often been demanding, petty, rude and harsh in how I got that agreement. It was given grudgingly, after sometimes spectacular scenes of dissent, which could have seen either one or both of us badly injured. It was like the political prisoner who signs his untrue confession in a gesture of consent – he picks up the pen, but only as a result of the tortures he has been subjected to, and which he knows will continue if he does not sign. Some horses, dogs, and humans never have a fair chance to do anything ‘right’ enough to avoid being punished. But surely the key is to avoid disagreement in the first place. The crucial ingredient was trust. And every time I hit a horse, or even threatened or thought of hitting him, I was doing so simply because I had no better method to get what I wanted, and had listened to some bad advice.

The results Monty achieved were magical, but the methods were logical, relying on a sound understanding and application of body language and psychology rather than force. Instead of getting a horse to do things, Monty was getting the horse to want to do them. I came away resolved to change the way I treated horses, having learned more valuable information about how to train horses in that one night than I had in all the years before.