Spirit of the Horse

by William Shatner

  All became silent, but their eyes were riveted upon the water as it closed in on them.

  Now there was but perhaps twenty yards of dry ground, then fifteen, and still the water rose. The rise continued until all stood in water, and then it rose no higher.

  “Thank God!” said Henderson, calmly, looking at his wife. “We are saved!”

  “Thank God, indeed,” said Shirley softly, and she turned and stroked the horse, who thrust his cold muzzle into her hand. “But for you,” she added, patting him gently, “hundreds would have been drowned!”

  BORN IN THE SADDLE

  Born in the saddle.

  It’s just an expression. It describes someone, like Annie Oakley, who is such a good and natural rider that—well, they had to have been born on horseback. Indeed, in some cases, it may be true in a literal sense.

  In Asia, Cossacks and Mongolian horsemen were (and remain) among the finest riders who ever lived. They are always jumping off the horse, running alongside it, getting back on, spinning on their butts on top of the horse. Through it all, there is remarkably little leg contact. What are they using to control the horse … or is that just a ridiculously well-trained horse?

  The answer is: both.

  Among certain people—and you can include Native American riders among them—the horse’s sides are so sensitized that just the slightest shift in weight is all you need to cue the horse that it has to do something. The Native Americans didn’t have a saddle, and they sat on the horse using—in totality—the bounce, and the grip of their legs on the horse. Native American children would grow up riding a horse, becoming one with the horse. They were a little mean on the withers of the horse, clinging there, with their hands in the mane. They wrapped their legs around the horse in whatever fashion they could, depending on the reach and strength of their thighs, shins, feet. Riding bareback is a skill involving a level of balance that you only partially use in a saddle. When riding with a saddle, if the horse suddenly stops, using the saddle and your balance and your instincts, your feet shoot forward in the stirrups, and you resist the forces of nature, gravity, by the soles of your feet, and you push back with your legs and thighs. You resist the forward g-force of a sliding horse. Without a saddle, you don’t have that option.

  I frankly do not know how you prevent yourself from going over the head of a horse when that horse, at full gallop, decides to turn left or right, or suddenly stops and braces all four feet in front of a hole and says, “I’m not going over that hole.” Many great horsemen have come off a horse when it resists a jump, even if they’re using a saddle. Every jumper Grand Prix horse I’ve ever seen, at a full gallop, with a great horseman on his back, who resists a jump invariably causes the horseman to go over the horse’s head and hit the ground, or hit the jump.

  How the heck does the horseman without a saddle not do that? Maybe they did fall. Maybe more Native Americans and Mongols and Cossacks were injured than we know. That’s certainly not something one would memorialize in art.

  However, there is also the possibility—and it happens to me every day that I am on one of my horses—that they are reading your mind. Or something very close to that. Remember my mentioning before about the horse that knew his trainer was coming, however much she changed her pattern? In some strange fashion, it might be some imperceptible muscle twitch that you’re totally unaware of—but the moment you think of doing something, the horse is prepared to do it.

  A little historical sidebar here to validate that point. It’s about a horse named Clever Hans. He was an Orlov Trotter who lived at the turn of the twentieth century, and this horse was touted as being able to add up figures. His owner, Wilhelm von Osten, would bring him to circuses where people would pay to ask something like, “What’s seven and seven, what’s two and nine, what’s fourteen plus twenty,” and the horse would paw to the sum and then stop. The crowds and the owner actually believed the horse could add and subtract. They tried blindfolding Clever Hans, they tried blindfolding and muting the owner. And the horse would add up those figures.

  The trainer swore that he was doing nothing, and people kept their eyes on him. He was doing nothing. It was only years and years later that they discovered that the horse, who just happened to paw continuously, would do so until given a cue not to. What was happening on an extremely subtle level was that when the horse arrived at the figure, the trainer or an engaged observer either took in or let out a breath in anticipation or relief. It was inadvertent and it was there, since his livelihood depended on it! The horse took that as a command to stop. That was how he got to the correct figure.

  My friend the martial artist, whom I mentioned earlier, has been training for sixty years and he calls these barely perceptible disturbances “micro-movements.” He says that a seasoned martial artist, a master, is not someone who goes into a situation with grand, showy moves. He approaches with incredible stillness. He watches for a tic, a blink, a breath, the movement of a toe or finger or a shift in stance. Then he will strike, decisively.

  Any experienced horseman will tell you the same thing about riding. You force yourself, move yourself, think yourself into an absolutely relaxed position. No cue from your legs or butt at all. And many, many horses seem to sense what you want. So if you are thinking about changing leads, that horse has got your thought.

  These people who are born in the saddle probably understand that before they understand the actual mechanics of horse control. They also understand the psychology of horses—and by extension, all animals they might encounter, from steer to mules to sheep.

  All animals—and let’s open this up to orcas, lions, lowland gorillas, elephants, mountain goats—they’re highly, highly intelligent, highly intuitive. There are scientists who say that we anthropomorphize all these animals, all these qualities we think of as “human,” and that none of that exists. But an equal number of ethologists will tell you that animals not only have rudimentary reasoning capabilities, they also have morality.

  You can see this yourself. When animals play, they make a significant signal. For example, birds. You can always tell the difference between those that are courting and, say, pigeons that are puffing up to dominate a ledge or a crust of bread in the street. Dogs bow as if to announce, “Okay, it’s playtime. So when I bite you I won’t be biting you for real.” And every so often they reassure each other, “Hey, this is for play.” When one or the other exceeds that play, they won’t press the advantage and cause more harm. They will make a sign that says, “This is play, but I’ve bit you too hard, you yelped, and now I have to say ‘I’m sorry’ or we’ve got a problem. Because the play just turned into something more fearful.” You’ll notice that they are always, ineffably gentle around babies. When dogs do try to assert themselves—

  Here’s something that happened to me very recently. I had just come in from riding and this little terrier was there. He belonged to a guest; I hadn’t seen him before. I walked into the tack room and he started barking and then he attacked me! He actually jumped at my leg and started nipping, the way terriers do. I yelled at him and he backed into the corner growling and yelping, and I growled and yelped right back at him! I dominated him. And finally he gave up and he cowered down a little bit, and then he came up to me and I gave him my hand, and I petted him, and I absolutely communicated with that terrier: “You don’t do that to me.” I wasn’t cruel, I wasn’t mean, I just did what dogs would do and he understood that this was not his turf.

  So, based on a number of indicators, we can divine that in all animals there is a sense of fair play. Yes, of course, some of that—as with the terrier—is rooted in survival. But as soon as we established a dialogue, there was actual détente! And the higher up you go—on the chain of what we think are the higher animals—the more that takes place. Humans who put their vanity aside, who access their animal core—and we all do have one, genetically speaking—can read this very, very clearly.

  With that groundwork laid, I want to talk about two excep
tional show-business figures who were born in the saddle.

  One was a stuntman by the name of Yakima Canutt. Born in 1895, he was a champion rodeo rider before he went into movies as a stuntman. He is credited (by himself, anyway) with having given his pal John Wayne his distinctive walk.

  Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t. He was certainly among those who taught the Duke to ride well. Yak himself definitely walked “that way,” with an almost equine sway. Rodeo riding will do that—give you a constant shift in your step, a realignment, a change in your balance.

  It takes a long time to move that fluidly, and developing the skills to stay on a bucking horse requires a lot of falls. You have to learn not to fear it and to be relaxed enough to stay on the horse. So if you’re looking at a guy sitting on a bucking horse, he’s fallen off countless times. It’s a metaphoric cliché, of course, getting right back on the horse after you’ve been thrown. But it’s true, and it takes something special to get back on that independent-minded titan. I’ve been bucked off more times than I can count and, frankly, I don’t know how these rough riding folks can stay on. That horse is tossing so hard and fast that you leave gravity. That’s right: you get flung upward, first, by the transfer of energy and when you come down the saddle is just coming up. You hit it hard, it hurts, and you’re off. If you manage to hang on, your balance is completely gone in the first leap or two. So I don’t know how these guys stay on a bucking horse, but they do.

  Well, that’s not quite true. Yak and others stay on a bucking horse because it’s what they were born to do.

  Yak loved horses. Loved them. He was so good at controlling them with nuance that he was one of the few people who could look credible on horseback firing a rifle or shooting a bow and arrow for the camera. He also invented an entirely new kind of “horse fall” in Westerns, one in which the rider took the horse down in a way that injured neither horse nor rider. When John Ford made Stagecoach in 1939, the joke—which wasn’t really a joke—was that Yak was the one who took the fall for every galloping cavalryman, stagecoach rider, and Native American in the climactic chase. That same year, Yak doubled for Clark Gable during the burning-of-Atlanta scene in Gone with the Wind. Not just because of the fire danger, but in order to coax the horse to move past a conflagration of that size and intensity. Watch that scene: it’s amazing how Yak gets that horse to move.

  This man was born for that work. He was one with his horses, something we’ll talk more about later.

  The other film personality I want to mention here was a wonderful horseman named Ben Johnson. Ben was a tall, toned guy who worked as a ranch hand, rodeo rider, and wrangler for films before becoming an actor. You may remember him roping a gorilla in Mighty Joe Young in 1949. When he was too old to do the kind of hard riding he did in films, he became a wonderful character actor who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work in the 1971 film The Last Picture Show.

  You watch an actor riding a horse on-screen—follow the horse with your eye, you will see those actors who can ride and those who can’t. I talked a little about this earlier, but watch how unskilled riders jerk the reins. What happens is the horse’s mouth gets really sensitive, especially when they might have to do the scene two, three, four, five times. The horse anticipates what’s going to happen, and you can see that on-screen. But then you see someone like Ben Johnson, who was a cowboy, or other skilled rider/actors like Tyrone Power, Randolph Scott, Errol Flynn, Gary Cooper, Tab Hunter, Tim Holt, Charlton Heston—their horses’ heads never move no matter how many takes were required, because the rider was in control. They are constantly talking to the horse through the reins.

  They are the epitome of great riders, people who make the art look relaxed and easy.

  My hat is off in tribute to those riders, to Annie Oakley and others, who inspire us still.

  How the Old Horse Won the Bet

  by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES (1830)

  The bond between horse and rider is an elusive quality, and this poem gets it right.

  Author, poet, physician—Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) was one of the great persons of his age. I came across this poem many years ago in his collection The One Horse Shay (1891), and there was never any doubt that I would include it in this collection.

  It isn’t just the wonderful, masterly writing and storytelling: it is the theme itself, which certainly speaks to those of us well beyond our middle age. I would add that it is miraculous, too, in that the title tells you how it ends and yet you will still keep reading!

  ’T was on the famous trotting-ground,

  The betting men were gathered round

  From far and near; the “cracks” were there

  Whose deeds the sporting prints declare:

  The swift g. m., Old Hiram’s nag,

  The fleet s. h., Dan Pfeiffer’s brag,

  With these a third—and who is he

  That stands beside his fast b. g.?

  Budd Doble, whose catarrhal name

  So fills the nasal trump of fame.

  There too stood many a noted steed

  Of Messenger and Morgan breed;

  Green horses also, not a few;

  Unknown as yet what they could do;

  And all the hacks that know so well

  The scourgings of the Sunday swell.

  Blue are the skies of opening day;

  The bordering turf is green with May;

  The sunshine’s golden gleam is thrown

  On sorrel, chestnut, bay, and roan;

  The horses paw and prance and neigh,

  Fillies and colts like kittens play,

  And dance and toss their rippled manes

  Shining and soft as silken skeins;

  Wagons and gigs are ranged about,

  And fashion flaunts her gay turn-out;

  Here stands,—each youthful Jehu’s dream,—

  The jointed tandem, ticklish team!

  And there in ampler breadth expand

  The splendors of the four-in-hand;

  On faultless ties and glossy tiles

  The lovely bonnets beam their smiles;

  (The style’s the man, so books avow;

  The style’s the woman, anyhow;)

  From flounces frothed with creamy lace

  Peeps out the pug-dog’s smutty face,

  Or spaniel rolls his liquid eye,

  Or stares the wiry pet of Skye;—

  O woman, in your hours of ease

  So shy with us, so free with these!

  “Come on! I’ll bet you two to one

  I’ll make him do it!” “Will you? Done!”

  What was it who was bound to do?

  I did not hear and can’t tell you,—

  Pray listen till my story’s through.

  Scarce noticed, back behind the rest,

  By cart and wagon rudely prest,

  The parson’s lean and bony bay

  Stood harnessed in his one-horse shay—

  Lent to his sexton for the day;

  (A funeral—so the sexton said;

  His mother’s uncle’s wife was dead.)

  Like Lazarus bid to Dives’ feast,

  So looked the poor forlorn old beast;

  His coat was rough, his tail was bare,

  The gray was sprinkled in his hair;

  Sportsmen and jockeys knew him not,

  And yet they say he once could trot

  Among the fleetest of the town,

  Till something cracked and broke him down,—

  The steed’s, the statesman’s, common lot!

  “And are we then so soon forgot?”

  Ah me! I doubt if one of you

  Has ever heard the name “Old Blue,”

  Whose fame through all this region rung

  In those old days when I was young!

  “Bring forth the horse!” Alas! he showed

  Not like the one Mazeppa rode;

  Scant-maned, sharp-backed, and shaky-kneed,

  The wreck of what was once a stee
d,

  Lips thin, eyes hollow, stiff in joints;

  Yet not without his knowing points.

  The sexton laughing in his sleeve,

  As if ’t were all a make-believe,

  Led forth the horse, and as he laughed

  Unhitched the breeching from a shaft,

  Unclasped the rusty belt beneath,

  Drew forth the snaffle from his teeth,

  Slipped off his head-stall, set him free

  From strap and rein,—a sight to see!

  So worn, so lean in every limb,

  It can’t be they are saddling him!

  It is! his back the pig-skin strides

  And flaps his lank, rheumatic sides;

  With look of mingled scorn and mirth

  They buckle round the saddle-girth;

  With horsey wink and saucy toss

  A youngster throws his leg across,

  And so, his rider on his back,

  They lead him, limping, to the track,

  Far up behind the starting-point,

  To limber out each stiffened joint.

  As through the jeering crowd he past,

  One pitying look old Hiram cast;

  “Go it, ye cripple, while ye can!”

  Cried out unsentimental Dan;

  “A Fast-Day dinner for the crows!”

  Budd Doble’s scoffing shout arose.

  Slowly, as when the walking-beam

  First feels the gathering head of steam,

  With warning cough and threatening wheeze

  The stiff old charger crooks his knees;

  At first with cautious step sedate,

  As if he dragged a coach of state;

  He’s not a colt; he knows full well

  That time is weight and sure to tell;

  No horse so sturdy but he fears

  The handicap of twenty years.

  As through the throng on either hand

  The old horse nears the judges’ stand,

  Beneath his jockey’s feather-weight

  He warms a little to his gait,

  And now and then a step is tried

  That hints of something like a stride.

  “Go!”—Through his ear the summons stung

  As if a battle-trump had rung;