Courses for horses

Watch Jo with her daughter Charlotte's five-year-old pony Flicker, and you can well believe the two are communicating. There is something about the way they stand together and watch each other.

Flicker, says Jo affectionately, is a feisty little character. In a wild herd, she would be the boss. But between pony and person there is a definite bond of trust.

Jo is - or at least, is training to be - a horse whisperer. As anyone who has seen the Robert Redford film of that name will know, a horse whisperer is a trainer who works with a horse's instinctive herd-based behaviour to train it and teach it to accept saddle and bridle.

Jo admits she doesn't know quite where the term 'horse whisperer' came from. She certainly doesn't go around whispering to the animals. "But it is a very subtle thing. You're listening, being very quiet, opening your mind to what the horse is saying," she says.

Essentially, says Jo, she uses her understanding of a horse's body language to dominate an animal and convince it she is the leader of its herd.

In the wild, the herd leader is the one other horses look to protect them and lead them away from danger. They trust the leader completely, says Jo say, and follow wherever he or she leads.

"Therefore, if you become the 'leader' the horse knows you are not going to put it in danger and they trust what you are doing," she says. Which makes it much easier to persuade a horse to accept saddle, bridle and rider.

Just as in the wild, to become herd leader you first have to dominate the horse. The way to do that, says Jo, is to use assertive, even aggressive, body language, and essentially stare a horse down and force it to back away.

She demonstrates a few moves in the paddock at her parents' farm at Thornholme near Driffield, while Flicker watches with interest.

Basically, she says, she will stand square on to a horse, then wave her arms, fingers extended like cat's claws, until it backs away. The moment the animal does that, the battle is already half won, because it has begun to accept her leadership.

Then, her body language will change. She will half turn away, avoiding looking at the animal, inviting it to come forward. It will signal it has accepted her as dominant by putting an ear back and dropping it's head.

Then begins a process which legendary US horse whisperer Monty Roberts describes as "join-up" - a process Jo describes as "advance and retreat". Jo will advance on a horse, forcing it to back away and reasserting her dominance. Then she will turn her shoulder and look away, inviting it to move towards her again.

Again, it goes back to forms of behaviour learned in the wild. A predator that was advancing on a herd would not retreat, but would go in for the kill, explains Jo.

By advancing first, she shows the animal she is the boss. But by then turning away and retreating, she is demonstrating she poses no threat.

Once having established her authority as herd leader, Jo will reinforce her position of dominance and the horse's trust in her by picking up each of its feet in turn - putting it in a position in which it is very vulnerable.

Then, quite quickly, she will put the saddle on.

How long it will take for a horse to accept saddle and bridle depends on the horse itself - but at a demonstration in York last September Jo saw one of her own animals effectively "broken" and taught to accept a saddle in just 45 minutes, she says.

Using traditional methods, in which the trainer is working against the horse's will rather than with it, it can take up to six weeks.

It was watching that demonstration that persuaded the 34-year-old mother of two to train as a horse whisperer herself. "I was so moved and impressed that I decided to find out more," she says.

Now, with the help of a £2,352 vocational training scheme grant from DEFRA, the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Jo - a keen horsewoman since childhood - has signed up for a course at the Intelligent Horsemanship School in Witney, Oxfordshire.

The school is run by Kelly Marks, who trained with Monty Roberts, and the block release course involves her spending a total of 27 days at the school in Witney.

It means she can fit her training in with her duties as secretary of Driffield Agricultural Society and with helping out on her parents 600-acre arable farm.

"The training is exciting and very thorough - horse whispering is not as simple as it may look!" she admits. "We're taught about nutrition and musculature as well as equine psychology.

"There's a videoed assignment to work on, and towards the end of the training I also have to complete five detailed case studies on problem horses I have worked with."

"Problem" animals can include horses that won't take the bridle or saddle, and others that are frightened of vets or travelling in horseboxes, all of which she is learning to deal with.

There is nothing particularly new about horse whispering, Jo concedes. People such as gypsies have been using some of the techniques for centuries. But Monty Roberts has refined the old lore and put it into a form in which it can be taught.

It has certainly opened her eyes. Jo has been a keen horsewoman all her life; but she admits being able to understand horse language - and so in a sense learning how to be accepted by horses as one of themselves - has made her realise for the first time what individual characters the animals have.

Flicker, her daughter's pony, is the feisty one of the family's animals, she says. "But we've got one down the road and it is such a shy horse.

"I've been riding since I was seven, but when I was a child and had a pony I did not recognise any of this."

Jo hopes to complete her training by December next year, after which she plans to set up in business as a horse whisperer herself.

She hopes to convert some of the redundant outbuildings on her parents farm, and will work with horses there and at their owners own premises.

"There are so many ways of mastering a horse," she admits. "But this is such a nice, natural way of doing it."

Flicker would certainly agree.

Updated: 10:00 Wednesday, August 21, 2002