HORSES IN HISTORY-MAN'S UNIQUE BOND WITH THE HORSE

Basic communication with horses is quite simple, and there is nothing superhuman about it. The horse can easily be trained to communicate with man, and to understand man's communication. If you sit on a horse and pull the reins, it will stop quite easily – it is trained to stop when it feels the pressure of the bit. When you touch it with your heels it will go forward. You can steer it to the right, you can steer it to the left. You can teach your horse very quickly to do anything it is physically capable of doing. This is all communication, because man is communicat­ing to the horse through a language which they both understand, a language of signs taught to the horse by man.

But the horse himself also communicates with other horses, and it is this communication that I have set out to understand. Over the past twenty years I have con­centrated my energies on grasping the language that horses use themselves, not only to understand other horses but to communicate also with man. For I was convinced that there is another and more subtle level of communication between man and horse than the simple pressure of heel and rein. But of course I realised that before I could do anything, I had to understand how much was already known to man.

I was between twelve and fourteen when I first started to wonder why man rode horses and not cattle, sheep or pigs, and so I experimented a little. I tried to ride the heifers and pigs on the farm, and after being deposited a great number of times on the ground, concluded that the reason they were so difficult to ride was that they would simply not co-operate and work with you as horses do. Yet this conclusion itself poses a problem: why would horses let you ride them and not other animals? It was obvious that the horse was more intelligent than either the cow or the pig. It was just as obvious that it was stronger. Yet cattle are much more docile than horses, they drive more easily, they are quieter and steadier and much safer animals. to handle. Yet you cannot ride them. It could not be an instinct of self-preservation which made the heifer shake the rider off its back, since the same animal preyed on both the cattle and the horse. I could only suppose that there was some unique rapport, a special relationship, between man and horse which does not exist with any other animal, excepting possibly the dog. Why this should be so I did not know at the time, but I was to find out later from reading and from my own experience.

From my reading I discovered that horses featured in the cave drawings of prehistoric man first as prey for food, and later as mounts for man in hunting and in battle. Pic­tures of horses are engraved on the tombs of the Phar­aohs, horses are embodied in the Greek myths. Greek sculptors carved horses on their magnificent friezes. It was Xenophon, the famous Greek general, who said: 'horses are taught not by harshness but by gentleness.'

Alexander the Great was able to conquer a great part of the then known world largely by his use of his fine cavalry; and he it probably was who first discovered the value of crossing the hot-blooded Arab with the cold-blooded horse of Europe. His closeness to his own mount is shown by the fact that his horse Bucephalus is one of the first to be mentioned by name in history.

The great myth of the centaurs who were supposed to be part man, part horse was probably based on travellers' reports of the Mongolian tribe, the Hsiung-nu, who were later to appear as the Huns under Attila who tore the Roman Empire apart. The Hsiung-nu were nomads who controlled the whole of the central and Eastern European plain and were herdsmen and warriors. They kept their herds on the oceans of grass extending from the Hungarian plain to Manchuria and the great wall of China. Always searching for food, in the winter they sheltered under the lee of the mountains and in the spring they moved north and east to find fresh grazing. They waged war on every­body, even on sections of their own race, and on all of the northern civilised world. They were said to be born on horseback and could ride before they could walk. They used their horses for everything: they would no more think of walking more than two or three steps than they would dream of flying, and so no doubt gave rise to the legend of a race that were part man and part horse.

By the end of the second century bc the Hsiung-nu ruled a large section of the world. The Emperor of China, Wu-ti, was in such terror of them that he developed a very formidable cavalry force, and about 142 Bc the brilliant Chinese General Hoc'u-P'ing managed to split the main Hsiung-nu army; but even then the Chinese cavalry proved inferior. So the Emperor Wu-ti sent an army of three hundred thousand men three thousand miles to Western Afghanistan to capture a superior breed of horse. The whole army died on the way. Nothing daunted, Wu-ti sent out a second army, and enough of these survived the three thousand miles to Afghanistan and three thousand miles back to bring back thirty breeding animals. They were probably a strain of Arab, reported to be able to travel three hundred miles a day and to sweat blood. Almost certainly they were descendants of Arabs who had been carried eastwards by Alexander the Great's troops.

The success of Julius Caesar in establishing Roman rule over so much of Europe was almost certainly due to his brilliance as a cavalry general. Again, he and his horse were reported to be inseparable. The Emperor Caligula, indeed, thought so much of his horse Incitatus that, according to legend, he made him a Senator, claiming that he was both wiser and more loyal than any other member of the Senate. The Roman Empire survived 500 years, until the superior horse power of the Hun army, which had already conquered the northern world, finally sacked Rome in ad 408.

Later these same Mongolian horseback tribes were to re-appear as the hordes of Ghengis Khan, who were also supposed to be conceived, born and married, and finally to die, on their horses. On one occasion Ghengis Khan's troops conquered a town by climbing a cliff on horseback which the defenders thought to be unscalable by man.

Central to all this history lies the uncanny relationship between man and horse. Later Norman knights in armour and the fabulous Ottoman cavalry took their turns to conquer the then-known world. In each case a key to vic­tory was the understanding and use of the horse; for these ancient armies were made up of riders who knew how to communciate with horses.

There is a story told of an Arab chief named Jabal who owned the fastest horse in the world. Hassad Pacha, then governor of Damascus, wished to buy the mare and repeat­edly made Jabal the most liberal offers, which he steadily refused. The Pacha threatened him but with no better success. In the end he persuaded a Bedouin called Gafar, from another tribe, to steal the mare, offering as a reward to fill the mare's nosebagwith gold. News of this bargain got out and Jabal became more watchful than ever and secured his mare at night with an iron chain, one end of which was fastened to her hind fetlock and the other to the ground under Jabal's bed. But one night Gafar crept silently into the tent and succeeded in loosening the chain. Just before he started off with the mare, he caught up Jabal's lance and poking him with the butt end, cried out 'I am Gafar, I have stolen your noble mare and give you notice in time.' This warning was in accordance with the customs of the desert, for to rob a member of another tribe was considered to be an honourable exploit, and Gafar wanted the glory of the theft. Jabal when he heard the words rushed out of the tent and gave the alarm, jumped on to his brother's horse and, accompanied by some of his tribe, pursued the robber for four hours. The brother's mare was of the same breeding as Jabal's horse, but was not quite as fast as she was. Nevertheless she out-galloped all the other pursuers and was on the point of overtaking the robber, when Jabal shouted at him 'pinch her right ear and give her the touch of the heel.' Gafar did so and went away with the mare like lightning, speedily rendering pursuit hopeless. The pinch of the ear and the touch of the hell were the secret signs by which Jabal had been used to make his mare increase her speed. Jabal's companions were amazed and indignant at this strange conduct. 'You are the father of a jackass,' they cried, 'Fancy enabling the thief to rob you!' But he answered them by saying 'I would rather lose her than spoil her reputation. Would you have me suffer it to be said among the tribes that another mare had proved greater than mine? I have at least this comfort left to me. I can say she has never met her match. This is a lovely legend, and the point of it is that until the correct form of communication was used, the mare did not know what to do, but as soon as the correct command was given, she settled down and galloped like the wind.

In America too there are countless stories of the horse, but the only American Indians who set out to study and understand the horse were the Mohicans. They did not break the horse's'spirit by getting on it and riding it until it gave in. They used to spend days handling it, talking to it and feeding it, and gently, gently, gently getting on its back. They would work for hours over a horse's back with a blanket, and when the horse understood what they wanted, they had no trouble in riding it.

Over the last century there have been men all over the world who have gained fame as horse-tamers. In America there was Reary, in Australia Galvin, in Ireland Dan Sul­livan the Whisperer, and in this country Palmer and later on Captain Hayes. The stories about them are legion, but basically they have one feature in common, and this is the hero's ability to control and dominate a horse no matter how difficult or how wild. Their methods varied. Reary had a system of ropes and throwing a horse to train it. Galvin had a number of 'humane twitches', as he called them. Some, like Palmer, had 'taming oils', for which there were various recipes, one involving grinding the chestnut of a horse's leg into a powder, and blowing it into his nostrils. Oil of rhodium was sometimes used, so was origanum, and some people simply used the sweat from their armpits. These techniques have one virtue in common: they all gave the person using them a certain amount of confidence in handling a difficult horse.

But Sullivan the Horse-Whisperer was probably the greatest of all the old-fashioned horse tamers, for he used nothing but his own ability. He would go up to horses, who were killers, kickers or unbreakable in some other way, and he would have the door shut on him. After an hour or so he would open the door, and walk the horse out on a halter absolutely quiet. The Whisperer never took any pupils and he never taught even his own sons his skill. He was so jealous of his gift that even his priest at Ballyclough could not get the secret out of him in confession. Sullivan's sons used to boast about how His Reverence met the Whisperer on the road towards Mallow and charged him with being a confederate of the devil. The Whisperer made the priest's horse bolt for miles until the holy man promised in de­spair to let Sullivan alone with his secret for ever. Only one of the Whisperer's sons practised his art, but he had no real knowledge of how to do it and neither of the other two pretended any skill at all. The Whisperer had a great fasci­nation for me because I had this ability to handle difficult horses myself, and I often wondered how his gift compared with mine. But I think he used something similar to the system that we practice ourselves when we gentle a horse. I believe he used to get his hand on to the horse and simulate the movements of a mare nuzzling her foal, and as soon as the horse understood the familiar signs, he would relax, and all the time Sullivan would be talking with his gentle sing-song Irish voice, until he could get both his hands on the horse and relax him, and create a bond of under­standing between him and the horse.

Palmer, the English horse-tamer, used taming oil which he would put on his hand, then put his hand under the horse's nose and blow it up his nostrils, and the horse would immediately become docile. Barbara Woodhouse relates how a similar practice is still used in South America, though without the oils, probably taken there from this country about the middle of the last century. There is nothing strange about this custom: when two horses meet, they will blow through their nostrils, strongly ,or gently depending on their mood. Two horses that are hostile to each other will almost trumpet through their nostrils; while a mare caressing her foal will blow so gently that you can hardly hear her. When Palmer blew up the horse's nos­trils, all he said was 'I am friendly, I will not hurt you.' If you are doing this yourself you should next get your hand on to the horse and get your fingers into physical contact. The horse again will understand; because when two horses are frightened, they will push together to get physical con­tact.

This principle is similar to that behind the system prac­tised by the American Mohicans. They too would get physical contact with their horses, and as soon as physical contact was established the horse began to under­stand, because the signs that he used himself were being used.

It should now be clear that these methods all had one thing in common: they all used the signs that the horses use themselves, and so instead of using foreign signs and sounds to train a horse, they used signs and sounds the horse already understood.

Captain Horace Hayes' methods are so well known that there is no need for me to go into them here, but the point of interest is that a pupil of his was Captain Ward Jackson, who was my father's Company Commander in India during the First World War, and Ward Jackson took my father as a pupil and taught him Hayes' methods, and in turn of course my father taught me, so I always feel a very close contact with Horace Hayes. There is a lovely story about him, which as far as I know has not been told before. When Hayes was in India he dined one night in a neighbouring mess. The wine was good and it was well sampled, the whole party got rather high, and everyone was talking ex­pansively. Now it so happened that the Colonel of the regiment owned an unmanageable horse and late in the evening he sold it to Hayes, and then bet him that he would be unable to ride him on parade the next day. They settled for a bet of five hundred rupees. Horace Hayes, anxious to win his bet, left the party and spent the rest of the night working on the horse to get it going. The following morn­ing Hayes rode the horse out on parade, and the horse went beautifully for him. The Colonel, anticipating the loss of his five hundred rupees, ordered the troops to fire a jeu-de-joie, which meant that they fired off their rifles at random. When this happened all the other chargers disappeared with their riders over the horizon; but not so the horse Hayes was riding. He stood like a rock, still and relaxed. As soon as the order was given, Hay6s had kicked his feet out of the stirrups, pulled out his pipe and lit it. He was so relaxed that his horse took no notice of the rifles being fired. The other officers on the other hand, fearing that the horses were going to bolt, pulled them together, and in doing so, frightened them even more than the rifles had done. This story finely illustrates the great control that man can have over a horse by controlling him mentally as well as physically.

Such control and understanding no doubt not only applies to horses, for it is probably the great art of stock­manship in general to know and understand the animals that you are handling and sense when something is wrong with them. I remember an incident that took place when I was about twelve years old. By some miracle I had beaten Les the cowman into die cowshed one morning. (This was the only time it ever happened that I was up before Les.) I remember him coming into the cow stall, and almost before he was through the door, saying 'What is the matter with Pride?' He could not see Pride, but sure enough, when he walked down to the far end of the cow stall, Pride was lying down with milk fever. There was a bond between Les and the cows of much the same kind as I feel with horses.

Similarly, a shepherd may have an intuitional sympathy with his sheep. I have heard a shepherd claim that at lamb­ing time he often got up in the middle of the night, without quite knowing why, to go out to the sheep; and to use his own words 'Hardly a journey was a wasted one.' There was always something wrong that needed his attention.

Animal communication has become a problem of in­creasing concern to modern mankind over the past twenty years. The Russians were the first people to start serious research just over twenty years ago, and more recently the Americans have taken an interest. The Russians however, seem to have started off on the wrong track. They based their work on observations on dogs and rats and the thing that I think led them the wrong way is the fact that the rat has a number of signals with definite meanings, that are easy to discern, and researchers have thus been encouraged to try to make patterns of other signals and sounds, or of the signs made by other animals. For example, the rat has a definite signal for distress and other signals for alarm: these are vocal signals designed to carry a very large dis­tance. It also has an ultrasonic squeak which it gives when meeting another rat, the note of the squeak denoting its place within the social hierarchy. The dog equally has a number of sounds which have definite meanings. But to observe these sounds without taking into account other forms of communication leads only to a dead-end. They are only part of the animal's communication system.

The Americans have done a lot of very good work, though they have also concentrated on sounds. Their work was on dolphins, however, whose main form of communication is in sound: because a lot of dolphin communication takes place when the animals are out of sight of each other, the dolphins seem to have a developed vocal language which most animals do not.

This primary mistake of the early researchers, who tried to make a pattern out of the sounds the animals made, was largely the result of assuming that man's behaviour pattern was similar in this respect to that of animals. Since people of the same race use a set language it was argued that man as a whole uses a set language, which he does not. Mankind as a whole uses a number of languages. It was also assumed that man communicates using sounds alone, and this again is wrong. Man does not use sounds alone to convey any meaning, since he also uses signs and facial expression, which itself is a sign. The major error in these three basic assumptions has resulted in only part of each animal's language being investigated – that is, only sounds or signs – and it is obviously impossible to understand any language by only understanding part of it.

As we will show later, man's behaviour pattern in com­munication cannot be directly related to forms of com­munication used by animals. Each species of animal is different. You cannot conclude that the form of com­munication used by one species is in any way parallel to the form of communication used by a completely different species. Very fortunately in this country, the little research that has been done in communication has been done in conjunction with research into animal behaviour. This has meant that research has not followed the pattern that has dominated the Russians and the Americans. Doctor Martha Kylie has done some research with cattle, and Meek and Ewbank have done a certain amount of research at Liverpool University. (In a similar spirit some very good work has been done in Africa on apes and chim­panzees.) Very little practical use has been made so far of any of this research into animal communication, however.

The Americans on the other hand have used their re­search to train dolphins for military purposes, and inciden­tally for use in the movies. The film The Day of the Dolphin is a fascinating example of how research into animal communication can be used. The six dolphins in this film were caught by the trainer Peter Moss off the coast of Florida. He was to remark later that there was something more than a man-animal relationship in the situation that developed between George C. Scott, who was the star of the film, Mike Nicolls, who was the director, and the dolphins. So great was this rapport that one ob­server who watched the dolphins at work insisted that the dolphins were actually 'expressing themselves' – that they really could act. Nicolls himself said he found himself re­acting to the dolphins just as if they were temperamental actors. Some days he loved them, some days he hated them. Since the dolphins' life is all play, their favourite game was rearranging the underwater lights used in the film, which at times made the filming impossible. Nicolls would get furious with them when they refused to do something they knew how to do, but then two minutes later they would come and rub their bellies on his feet and nibble his toes as if saying, to use his words, 'come on, don't be mad'. On one occasion Nicolls was sitting by the pool reading the script for the next days' scene, with one hand lightly scratching the tongue of the dolphin who was playing the male lead. The dolphin had been christened Buck, and Buck just lay there with his head on the side of the tank and his mouth wide open. Then Nicolls looked at Buck, and suddenly knew he was ready to be filmed. Right on cue the dolphin swam to the side of the tank, pushed himself under the arm of the boy who was playing the scene with him, and then proceeded to dive and swim right through a narrow open­ing, still with the boy in tow. Such was his timing that he got the actor to the position, right on cue to say his two lines. In all, Buck and the actor repeated the movements ten times, but each time they were failed by sunlight. Then on the eleventh attempt, Buck, who had not made a mis­take throughout, reared out of the water, began to make a series of sounds which built up into a noise like a football cheer, turned abruptly and swam away. 'That was what I was afraid of,' said Moss, 'it was boring him.'

Peter Moss had no trouble in teaching the dolphins to perform specific actions. But when one of the dolphins had to have a worried, apprehensive look, that was more difficult. In the end it was Nicolls who taught the dolphins to look apprehensive. Moss himself says that if he de­scribed the relationship that grew up between the dolphins and the director, people would say that he was mad.

It had been decided that at the end of the film the dol­phins would be allowed to go free. Nicolls said that in the event there was no choice about it: as soon as the two main dolphins had finished their last shot they made their own decision, turned round and swam out to the ocean. They took care of their fate themselves; but only when they knew the film was finished.

This story may be dismissed as a typical piece of Pub­licity Office ballyhoo, but to anyone who has experienced the amazing results that can be obtained by com­municating with animals in the language that they under­stand, and developing a real relationship with them, it has that unmistakable ring of truth. There are things in the story that even Hollywood could not dream up: even in this permissive age to suggest that one of its directors and a male dolphin could form a special relationship, is a little outrageous!

I was reminded by this story of something that hap­pened to me in 1970 at the Royal Welsh Show. The Welsh Cob Society had been asked to put on a display in the main ring and I was to do a special demonstration at the end, showing the versatility of the Welsh Cob. I had an awk­ward bloody-minded little horse called Trefais Comet. He was also without any doubt one of the most versatile horses of the breed, and I had developed a tremendous relation­ship with him. For the demonstration I had prepared a number of exercises, one of which was a full pass, which means that the horse walks at right angles to itself side­ways. When I tried to teach him this, I took him up to a four-foot forestry fence, walked him up the fence once sideways then down sideways and then up sideways again. I was feeling very pleased with myself, so I decided to do it once more. I went down sideways, then he took half a step back and went straight over the four-foot fence and that was that. I decided I could not do it at the Royal Welsh. But on the first day we had a wait before the display, so I was thinking about this when Comet suddenly, without any prompting from me, did a full pass one way and a full pass the other, and so that went into the demonstration. On the second day I was asked beforehand what I was going to do, so I told the officials, and Comet went straight into the ring and did everything exactly as I said I was going to do it, plus something that I would have thought was impossible, which was jumping into the air and turning in the air to face in the opposite direction. After his performance, he so loved the crowd's applause that he proceeded to invent things for himself to excel in. He was very fast and excit­able, and one of the things I knew I could not do was stop him dead, but nevertheless he finished his demonstration completely out of control, galloping straight towards the president's box and then at the last second stopping dead and standing on his hind legs. I had wanted him to do this and he knew I had wanted to do it, so he put it in himself. This is the kind of phenomenon that is possible once you are communicating with your horse effectively.

In the early days of our work, which began in 1955-6, we dealt mainly with Weeping Roger and Cork Beg. This meant that our research was largely limited to the signs and sounds used by those two particular horses. We knew that there was more to 'Equine Communication' than signs and sounds, but we felt it best to begin by trying to understand what the horse was saying, and why and how he responded to the signs and sounds used by another horse. This knowl­edge would be the basis for future work. But it was soon obvious from our observations that the horses were using the same signs and same sounds to convey a large number of meanings, so we concluded that there must be some­thing more than signs and sounds at work to distinguish one meaning from another, and we called this unknown factor 'attitude' or 'feeling'. It was only later that we used the terms 'telepathy' and 'extra-sensory perception': in fact it was ten years before we came round to doing so.

Research into the communication between animals is of comparatively recent origin, but knowledge and under­standing of animal communication is as old as man himself, and primitive tribes today have far more knowledge of animal communication than civilised man. Laurens Van Der Post in his travels among the bushmen discovered that the witch doctors could put themselves into a trance by gazing at the cave drawing of an antelope, and then de­scribe where the antelope were to be found. In other words, the witch doctor could put himself in mental com­munication with any antelope within ten or fifteen miles' radius, so that the hunters of the tribe could go out and kill it for food. Van Der Post calls this facility 'empathy'. But from our own work, we know it to be the one we call telepathy: the ability that animals use to transfer mental pictures to one another.

Much modern research into animal communication has been complicated by the fact that it has been limited to only one means of communication, usually sound; and this is as fruitless as trying to understand English by learning only the verbs. If we are to understand what horses are trying to say, and to make ourselves easily understood by them, we must use and understand the whole language, and not just one part of it. We must thus learn to think and react as the horse thinks and reacts, and guard against the sentimentality of anthropomorphism: that is, against endowing the animal with human characteristics. Indeed the man must reverse the process and when handl­ing horses become half-horse. Alex Kerr, the lion tamer, was once asked if he would allow his daughter to tame and train big cats, and he said no. Asked why, he said, 'Well, it is quite simple. To do it successfully she must think like a lion or a tiger, and if she thinks and acts like a lion or a tiger, the lion or tiger will look upon her as a lion or tiger, and that would mean that when she came into season, as human beings do just as animals do, the cat would know. And since the way a lion denotes affection is to pick the female up by the scruff of the neck, that is what he would do. And he would break her neck.' This is the essence of our communicating work. Alex Kerr probably had more understanding of how felines think than any living man and his book No Bars Between is unequalled.

The first person in recent times to claim to be able to communicate with animals was the Englishman Archie Delany, who masqueraded for a long time as an Indian half-breed called Grey Owl and wrote two famous books, Tales of an Empty Cabin and Sasho and the Beaver People. He was also the first man to advocate conservation, and he started the first of the modern nature reserves. Although in some things he was a fraud, he was also a very great man with a very great understanding with wild animals, es­pecially beavers, on whose habits and behaviour patterns he did some outstanding work. The beavers accepted him so completely that they made their lodge within his cabin at the side of a lake. He claimed to have produced a dictionary of beaver language, but I have unfortunately not been able to obtain a copy of this dictionary, and those reports I have of it indicate that it has been of little use to other people.

One of the many people to visit him was Mr. John Die-fenbaker, later Canadian Prime Minister, who visited him in late 1935 or early 1936. When he got there with a party of people, Delany said he would have to go and ask the beavers if they would receive him. Then he came back and said that the beavers had said they would. This was obvi­ously pure showmanship, but there is little doubt that in spite of his masquerade Delany did make a magnificent breakthrough in the study of animal communication. It was nearly twenty years before anyone else even attempted to communicate with animals, and very little use has been made of his work, mainly, I suspect, because of the aca­demic's inbuilt prejudice against any research done by a person living and working outside a university. But it is my feeling that it is to people like Alex Kerr and Grey Owl that we have to turn if we wish to extend our present under­standing of animal communication and behaviour.

There is a real difficulty in this experiential approach to study. For to understand the horse you must become a horse, you must think like a horse and act like a horse, research becomes extremely difficult, since it is difficult to be analytical at the same time as trying to think and react as

the animals will do: animals are simply not analytical! But we are not, nor have we ever been, concerned with ortho­dox research. We are interested only in gaining a greater understanding of our horses, and we hope that other people will reap from the ground that we are now sowing. It will be for them to take the work that we have done and analyse it, and carry out orthodox research on the foundations that we are now building.

CHAPTER THREE

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 647