Spirit of the Horse

by William Shatner

  The Mamalukes make their boast that they have the most ready horses of any cavalry in the world; that by nature and custom they were taught to know and distinguish the enemy, and to fall foul upon them with mouth and heels, according to a word or sign given; as also to gather up with their teeth darts and lances scattered upon the field, and present them to their riders, on the word of command. ’T is said, both of Caesar and Pompey, that amongst their other excellent qualities they were both very good horsemen, and particularly of Caesar, that in his youth, being mounted on the bare back, without saddle or bridle, he could make the horse run, stop, and turn, and perform all its airs, with his hands behind him. As nature designed to make of this person, and of Alexander, two miracles of military art, so one would say she had done her utmost to arm them after an extraordinary manner for every one knows that Alexander’s horse, Bucephalus, had a head inclining to the shape of a bull; that he would suffer himself to be mounted and governed by none but his master, and that he was so honoured after his death as to have a city erected to his name. Caesar had also one which had forefeet like those of a man, his hoofs being divided in the form of fingers, which likewise was not to be ridden, by any but Caesar himself, who, after his death, dedicated his statue to the goddess Venus.

  I do not willingly alight when I am once on horseback, for it is the place where, whether well or sick, I find myself most at ease. Plato recommends it for health, as also Pliny says it is good for the stomach and the joints. Let us go further into this matter since here we are.

  Our ancestors, and especially at the time they had war with the English, in all their greatest engagements and pitched battles fought for the most part on foot, that they might have nothing but their own force, courage, and constancy to trust to in a quarrel of so great concern as life and honour. You stake your valour and your fortune upon that of your horse; his wounds or death bring your person into the same danger; his fear or fury shall make you reputed rash or cowardly; if he have an ill mouth or will not answer to the spur, your honour must answer for it. And, therefore, I do not think it strange that those battles were more firm and furious than those that are fought on horseback.

  Caesar, speaking of the Suabians: “in the charges they make on horseback,” says he, “they often throw themselves off to fight on foot, having taught their horses not to stir in the meantime from the place, to which they presently run again upon occasion; and according to their custom, nothing is so unmanly and so base as to use saddles or pads, and they despise such as make use of those conveniences: insomuch that, being but a very few in number, they fear not to attack a great many.” That which I have formerly wondered at, to see a horse made to perform all his airs with a switch only and the reins upon his neck, was common with the Massilians, who rid their horses without saddle or bridle.

  Xenophon tells us, that the Assyrians were fain to keep their horses fettered in the stable, they were so fierce and vicious; and that it required so much time to loose and harness them, that to avoid any disorder this tedious preparation might bring upon them in case of surprise, they never sat down in their camp till it was first well fortified with ditches and ramparts.

  These new-discovered people of the Indies when the Spaniards first landed amongst them, had so great an opinion both of the men and horses, that they looked upon the first as gods and the other as animals ennobled above their nature; insomuch that after they were subdued, coming to the men to sue for peace and pardon, and to bring them gold and provisions, they failed not to offer of the same to the horses, with the same kind of harangue to them they had made to the others: interpreting their neighing for a language of truce and friendship.

  I have seen a man ride with both his feet upon the saddle, take off his saddle, and at his return take it up again and replace it, riding all the while full speed; having galloped over a cap, make at it very good shots backwards with his bow; take up anything from the ground, setting one foot on the ground and the other in the stirrup: with twenty other ape’s tricks, which he got his living by.

  There has been seen in my time at Constantinople two men upon one horse, who, in the height of its speed, would throw themselves off and into the saddle again by turn; and one who bridled and saddled his horse with nothing but his teeth; another who betwixt two horses, one foot upon one saddle and the other upon another, carrying the other man upon his shoulders, would ride full career, the other standing bolt upright upon and making very good shots with his bow; several who would ride full speed with their heels upward, and their heads upon the saddle betwixt several scimitars, with the points upwards, fixed in the harness. When I was a boy, the prince of Sulmona, riding an unbroken horse at Naples, prone to all sorts of action, held reals [small coins] under his knees and toes, as if they had been nailed there, to shew the firmness of his seat.

  WILD HORSES

  As the saga of Bucephalus indicates, wild horses are elemental. Each one is as big as all outdoors, fickle as a knee-high dust devil. Together, in a herd, they are so much more. In mathematics, you would say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. This is particularly true of herds, and it is even more particularly true of American herds. I put it to you that the idea of “American exceptionalism” began with the horse.

  Consider this: they were transported to these shores in a totally foreign way, on ancient, leaky boats. Those that had shied forcefully from the plank on other shores were probably not forced to board. They never would have survived. What about those who did? What do you think the impact was on the horses who got off of those boats? Only the best endured, brought here by the Spaniards to Central America and the English to the colonies. Those two groups of exceptional horses, some of them becoming free and wild, met somewhere in the center of the country and formed bands of wild horses, mustangs, and these were the best mating with the best. One can well imagine the Quarter Horse deriving its strength and its courage and its popularity in America from that singular fact.

  When I was a boy—and even now, as a much older boy—one of the most thrilling images I saw in films or storybooks or in my mind’s eye was a herd of wild horses roaming free. Whether they were in a relaxed state, grazing in majestic repose, or in a riot of movement, wild horses were a special sight, a special concept. When we think of elemental forces like fires or storms or earthquakes, human beings are at their mercy. We fight them or survive them, we do not hope to tame them. A herd of horses is at the outer limits of what can, in theory, be controlled. And, controlling them, humans can outrace winds and floods and flame.

  Even with my untrained eye those many years ago, I was sure I could pick out the leader of the herd in a film. Now, of course, I know I can. He’s usually a stallion, very strong, very sensitive. As in a deer herd or other male-dominated groups of animals, he is absolutely alert to any change in his environment. He races up and down, guiding the herd, being responsible for so many things: for breeding the mares, for collecting strays, for driving off other stallions or predators.

  To put it bluntly, a leader watches after the herd and also protects his own ass.

  Eventually, after a leader has accumulated a lot of mileage, a younger horse will challenge him and inevitably take over after a spirited fight. The leader is smart. He knows what’s coming. He’s watched as the young animals—his own sons—get larger and larger, faster and faster. Often, the leader may kick that young stallion out, thereby alleviating the interbreeding that could occur. But eventually those two-year-old, or yearling, male horses turn three and four, come to the fullness of their strength, and come back to fight their father.

  In our society, that kind of conflict is the stuff of Shakespearean drama. Except for the fact that horses are vegetarians, James Goldman’s magnificent play The Lion in Winter, about Henry II fighting off his patricidal-fratricidal sons, could have been The Horse in Winter. Maintaining leadership of a herd is bare-hooves brawling!

  There is a great lesson in this process, however. Unlike in the world of predators�
��and I include humans in this—the horse that has lost is not pursued by the victor. As soon as one animal adjourns the competition, the other moves off. In the society of horses, there is something ancient and poignant about what follows. Especially when we consider that while the king of the hill may be ousted, effectively discarded, the wise old mare of the herd is respected and is very much a dominant force. This is in keeping with the ways of many other animals, such as elephants and lions, where the society is fundamentally matriarchal.

  The end of any life spent in charge of anything is always a time for reflection, and I imagine that in his own way the deposed herd leader—if he hasn’t been seriously injured—reflects on the past in some fundamental way. Perhaps he visualizes or smells or hears echoes. Perhaps it’s less fleeting and specific than that, maybe it’s the same things that appealed to me as a boy, to so many of us: the vanished “days of yesteryear” when there was nothing but the promise of the future and the wonder of the open plains.

  But you see, in this innate sense of freedom, the difficulty any trainer faces in order to train them. You’re bringing to bear things like the lead line, the lash whip, the saddle, the blanket, the bridle … you’re presenting a lot of new things that horses intuitively choose to flee from, rather than subject themselves to. How do you overcome that?

  Stacy Westfall, a wonderful trainer, has a unique approach. She believes, and I agree, that horses can read intentions really well. Prey animals must do that: think of a deer, always alert. And when you approach them, your intention—whether it is to conquer them, whether it is to see this process from their point of view—is quickly apparent to the horse. Even your body or something you’re innocently carrying with you—like my hat—can be terrifying. So you have to begin by understanding that the horse needs to have choices. Think of any human situation. When we think about a boss who is effective, they could be effective as a leader, or they could be effective as a dictator, and each creates a different feeling in the office. If a trainer senses they are experiencing apprehension, you have to work around it with them, instead of just forcing them. For example, if you are working inside a round pen, you give them the choice of staying and perhaps being rubbed with a blanket, or leaving. It requires a lot of patience and empathy. Forcing them, I believe, is a mistake. You can certainly make a horse stand still, but the horse will always be scared. It would be similar to saying, “Oh, you’re scared of spiders? Let me tie you to this chair near a spider and then you’ll get over it.”

  Stacy, for one, doesn’t even train a horse with reins or a saddle. She rides bareback, which is as close to the horse being in the wild, with freedom of choice, as it can be. You make the horse a partner rather than an employee. The value of this process is that it’s a lot like recognizing talent in children. You may make them take piano lessons or play baseball, but what if their talent is drawing? Or running? If you work with a child or a horse, let their own interest and talent lead them, as they move through the process they—and you—will discover where their greatest strength lies.

  In a way, that’s how a herd operates: it’s a form of natural selection. And through this process the trainer joins body and spirit with the horse so that both are enhanced. You know when that occurs: it happens in little moments, micro-moments that string together and suddenly, like falling in love, everything is different.

  Believe it or not, the horse understands this. Because, in effect, you are becoming a herd of two.

  This leads to the question of whether a human can be even more than that: a member of the herd, the way Dian Fossey lived among mountain gorillas in Rwanda. There is significant evidence that horses reach out to us as much as or more than we reach out to them, and it is not impossible to say where this will lead: a true pan-species unity, where the most empathic among both are one!

  It’s conceivable. I heard a story about just such a partnership, told by naturalist Joe Hutto, a gentleman who lived on a farm in the wilds of Montana. He became acquainted with a herd of mule deer, got to know individuals—in particular the occasional diplomat who would come and visit with him … then all of them would visit with him. And over a period of five, six years, he actually became part of the herd. They would groom each other, and he was able to saunter out into the wilds with them. In fauning, when they would bear the young in the spring, the mule deer brought these young to him and somehow communicated to the fauns that he was not a danger, was part of the herd. Yet they were always on guard for any stranger that might come over. They’d run away from anybody else, but not him.

  There are exceptional beings like this in any herd, probably more than we know, that through a mixture of courage and curiosity have brought their fellows to different places in their environment, including making friends with human beings. How many undocumented instances are there, I wonder, from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and among Native Americans?

  Which brings up the question of horse intelligence. There was a trainer I met, a woman, who had this particularly alert horse, and the horse would let everyone know when she arrived at the stables. It would start becoming agitated.

  So one day the trainer said, “I’m going to fool the horse. I’m not going to come in at the regular time, and I’ll come in silently.”

  It didn’t matter. Everything she did, no matter how quietly, how silently—there was nothing she could do that would change the ability of the horse to recognize her. I’ve also heard of this with dogs.

  So these animals are smart. But what if they became even smarter…?

  Gulliver’s Travels

  by JONATHAN SWIFT (1726)

  The herd is a wondrous thing because whatever intelligence guides it is fundamentally pure instinct, evolved and sharpened and elevated over millennia.

  What would happen if that development were to continue? Or what if the roles were reversed, if it were the humans who were wild and the horses who were civilized?

  Author Pierre Boulle imagined something like that in his classic 1963 novel Planet of the Apes, which became the basis for the science-fiction film franchise—and in which, you may recall, horses play a vital part, serving the intelligent apes in the same way they serve intelligent humans.

  But centuries before the French author wrote his novel, Jonathan Swift used a similar idea involving horses.

  You probably remember the most famous fictional voyages of Dr. Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon, who set sail in 1699 and was the sole survivor of a shipwreck, which deposited him in Lilliput, a land of very tiny people; leaving there, he ended up in Brobdingnag, a land of giants.

  But Gulliver had many other adventures, the last of which (excerpted here) was in the land of the Houyhnhnms, a civilization where the humans were beasts known as Yahoos, and the horses were the thoughtful, educated, articulate masters.

  Swift was a cynic, certainly a curmudgeon. Those qualities inhabit virtually every paragraph. (Don’t take just my word for it. This is the author who gave us “A Modest Proposal,” an essay which suggests a solution to famine and overpopulation in one, grim swoop.)

  By the way, the tongue-tripping name for the horses was apparently pronounced “Hwinnem,” since the author meant for all Houyhnhnm words to sound like neighing.

  Herewith are sections of Gulliver’s lengthy visit, beginning with the first meeting between educated man and educated horse … and concluding with the horse’s very logical reason for disbelieving what he’s been told!

  I saw a horse walking softly in the field; which my persecutors having sooner discovered, was the cause of their flight. The horse started a little, when he came near me, but soon recovering himself, looked full in my face with manifest tokens of wonder; he viewed my hands and feet, walking round me several times. I would have pursued my journey, but he placed himself directly in the way, yet looking with a very mild aspect, never offering the least violence. We stood gazing at each other for some time; at last I took the boldness to reach my hand towards his neck with a design t
o stroke it, using the common style and whistle of jockeys, when they are going to handle a strange horse. But this animal seemed to receive my civilities with disdain, shook his head, and bent his brows, softly raising up his right fore-foot to remove my hand. Then he neighed three or four times, but in so different a cadence, that I almost began to think he was speaking to himself, in some language of his own.

  While he and I were thus employed, another horse came up; who applying himself to the first in a very formal manner, they gently struck each other’s right hoof before, neighing several times by turns, and varying the sound, which seemed to be almost articulate. They went some paces off, as if it were to confer together, walking side by side, backward and forward, like persons deliberating upon some affair of weight, but often turning their eyes towards me, as it were to watch that I might not escape. I was amazed to see such actions and behaviour in brute beasts; and concluded with myself, that if the inhabitants of this country were endued with a proportionable degree of reason, they must needs be the wisest people upon earth. This thought gave me so much comfort, that I resolved to go forward, until I could discover some house or village, or meet with any of the natives, leaving the two horses to discourse together as they pleased. But the first, who was a dapple gray, observing me to steal off, neighed after me in so expressive a tone, that I fancied myself to understand what he meant; whereupon I turned back, and came near to him to expect his farther commands: but concealing my fear as much as I could, for I began to be in some pain how this adventure might terminate; and the reader will easily believe I did not much like my present situation.