For those unfamiliar with horses, getting a reluctant one to step into a horse trailer is like stuffing toothpaste back into the tube.
The horse will balk at the bottom of the ramp, slip out the sides, even rise over the top. Most eventually give in and get aboard. A few, like Tahlia, a 6-year-old mare that lives at Windcrest Farm in Lockport, prefer to stay home indefinitely.
Over several months, Tahlia’s owner, Sue Bebrich, had tried everything she knew as an experienced horsewoman to change the horse’s mind. At an impasse, she decided to call on horse whisperer Frank Bell of Larkspur, Colo. Bell was passing through the area two weeks ago on his way to Madison, Wis., where he would present a charity demonstration and “whispering workshop,” to show owners a better way of relating to their horses.
Bebrich had become aware of horse whispering — the craft of taming the untamable and transforming the ornery into the obedient — through the publicity revolving around two books. One is Nicholas Evans’ novel, “The Horse Whisperer” (Delacorte Press), about a Montana man who helps a horse regain confidence and trust after a horrific accident. The film version of this book, directed by and starring Robert Redford, comes out Friday.
The other book is “The Man Who Listens to Horses” by Monty Roberts (Random House), the story of a California horse whisperer who by royal request demonstrated his method to the queen of England.
Bell was the first real-life horse whisperer Bebrich had met. A lanky guy with a country twang, he drove up to Windcrest just before noon and declared to the group assembled there that he’d never met a horse he couldn’t load into a trailer in an hour.
Those who knew Tahlia glanced at each other and put the odds on the stubborn mare. Eight months ago, a two-hour struggle to load her on her journey to her new home at Windcrest was ended by drugging her. Five men then lifted her into the trailer. Two of those men, Sue Bebrich’s husband, Carl, and Jamie D’Arpa, were present.
Bell, 48, said he’d been a horse whisperer for 10 years, though he prefers to call himself “an equine psychologist who helps horses through problems people have gotten them into in the first place.”
“I help horses back to being OK, instead of (them) going to auctions, to feed the French or for dog food,” he added.
During his cross-country charity demonstrations for therapeutic riding programs, he said people bring him “four or five crazy horses, horses who have been abused, horses who buck, rear or run off.”
“Bring me anything. I don’t want to see it, or know anything about it beforehand,” he added, even though he often gets horses that have put people in hospitals. Bell himself broke a collarbone and wrist before he evolved his system, which he had come to by default.
“A horse bucked off my wife, the marriage ended and my wife left, but I kept the horse,” he said.
Horse whispering got its name 150 years ago in England, Bell explained. “An Irishman named Danny Sullivan, who had an incredible rapport with horses, would close all the doors, go into a stall with a cantankerous horse and come out an hour later with a quiet one. No one knew how he did it,” he said.
It was Sullivan’s livelihood, Bell added, so he kept his method secret and the mystique of the craft was born.
Bell, on the other hand, is eager to share his knowledge of how to persuade horses to cooperate — as opposed to traditional breaking by bucking them out, throwing them to the ground, beating them or otherwise forcing them into submission. Bell’s video, “Discover the Horse You Never Knew,” which details his seven-step bonding procedure, is available for $50 through his Web site, “Dances With Horses Inc.,” at www.horsewhisperer.com.
“I put a huge emphasis on bonding,” Bell says. “If you get a relationship and trust going, the chance of getting the job done is dramatically increased.”
It is shortly past noon, time for Bell to demonstrate what he could do for Tahlia. The bay mare is led out to the yard as Bell declares his intention to make the best first impression possible. He presents himself sideways, bending over and placing his head down near hers so he will be less threatening, then scratches inside her ears and nostrils, places she can’t reach on her own, to encourage bonding. He tells the crowd he is breathing in her nose a little bit, “some Native American techniques,” adding, “she’s so afraid, she just shuddered.”
After Tahlia relaxes a bit, he places her at the bottom of the trailer ramp, where she puts on the brakes, snorts and blows. The age-old confrontation between a horse that doesn’t want to give in and a man determined not to give up has begun in earnest. She rears to her full height, causing onlookers to gasp, lunges free and runs back in the barn.
Despite her behavior, Tahlia is no wild mustang. Due to the failing health of her original owner, legendary Trakehner breeder Edith Kosterka of Wayne, Ill., she had grown up with little handling by humans her first five years. Asking her to do things most horses learn as two- or three-year-olds is like putting shoes and a suit on the 21-year old boy who grew up with wolves and asking him to take his place in a corporation.
Tahlia’s sire, Troubadour, went to the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul with Christine Stuckelberger, the world’s foremost woman dressage rider, and Tahlia has great potential herself if she can get to shows.
An hour passes. As much as Tahlia backpedals, rears and flies off to the side, Bell patiently keeps bringing her back to the trailer ramp, tapping on her rear end with an old car antenna until she moves forward. Any progress he rewards with carrots and caresses, but when she goes backward, she gets in trouble. When she rears, he makes a “sssshhhhhh” noise and edges her backwards.
Into the second hour of this endless repetition, a number of those who came to see magic leave grumbling.
“I’ve got a tough one here, I’m fighting a lot of history,” says Bell. “The worst I’ve seen in a while.”
Yet he never loses patience or persistence, and at 3 p.m., nearly three hours after the session started, Tahlia finally places all four feet on the ramp. “Good Girl! Ha!” Bell says.
At 3:10 p.m., she demurely walks all the way in, prompted by carrots, caresses and sweet nothings in her ear. Carl Bebrich and Jamie D’Arpa cheer.
Bell then backs Tahlia off and, grandstanding a bit, flips the lead rope across her neck and lets her walk in by herself the second time.
Lynn Rhodes, 16, of Palos Hills, a regular visitor to the farm, wasn’t disappointed she hadn’t seen a miracle. Bell “used a lot of the things we had already tried, treats and tapping her behind, he just took more time at it,” she said.
Carl Bebrich observed that horse whispering seemed like “a lot of hard work,” along with persistence.
“She was tough. A pretty horse,” commented a tired Bell, bearing no grudges, though this was a record for him by two hours. His hands were red and chafed from rope burn, but his own spirit, as well as Tahlia’s, was intact.
What do you whisper to her, he is asked. “I just tell her I’m there for her and I’m going to help her,” he replies.
“Don’t let her backslide” are Bell’s last words as he gets in his rig and drives off toward Wisconsin.
As for Tahlia, Sue Bebrich now says the horse practices loading on the trailer nightly with no problems and will soon go to her first show.
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Frank Bell’s next horse whispering demonstration will be June 6-9 at Red Cedar Center, Ft. Wayne, Ind. Call 219-637-3608.
