Learning to Whisper

Our daughter, LinsiAn, loves animals, especially horses. For the last four summers she spent a week or more at Girl Scout camps with horses. Slowly, she is becoming an accomplished rider.

Some time ago. I heard a story about Grant Golliher, a horse whisperer who uses the Bible to inform his work. While I was not persuaded by the theological basis for his work, I did appreciate his personal transformation. Before he met Ray Hunt, a horse whisperer, 27 years ago, Golliher “broke” horses in the worst sense of that word. Based on what he learned from Hunt, he became a horse whisperer and has shared that gift with others.

On a trip to the library, I suggested a book to LinsiAn about horses, Paint the Wind by Pam Munoz Ryan. It’s a coming-of-age story about an eleven year old girl named Maya, a horse named, Artemisia, and her foal, Klee. LinsiAn loved the book.

This collage of images reminded me of the 1998 film The Horse Whisperer directed by and starring Robert Redford, which is based on the book of the same name by George Evans. It is a story about a horse whisperer, Tom Booker, a man of immense patience, who helps heal a girl, Grace, her horse, Pilgrim, both of whom were terribly injured in a riding accident, and Grace’s mother, Annie, a high-powered magazine editor, whose life and marriage are not working.

Dan M. “Buck” Brannaman, also a student of Ray Hunt, is a horse whisperer. He was the primary inspiration for Evan’s novel and served as the technical advisor for the film. Brannaman has said that, “Abused horses are like abused children. They trust no one and expect the worst. But patience, leadership, compassion and firmness can help them overcome their pasts.” Brannaman knows what he’s talking about, having experienced abuse at the hands of his father after his mother died. He had the good fortune to end-up with foster parents Forrest and Betsy Shirley, who lived on a ranch near Bozeman, Montana. They had raised four children of their own and provided a home for some period of time for 17 other foster boys. They offered Brannaman positive discipline, leadership, and direction along with love, empathy, and support. In a sense, they, too, taught him how to be a horse whisperer. In his work, Brannaman helps people who have problems with their horses, and, more importantly, helps horses who have problems with their people.

The philosophy of horse whispering is to work with the horse's nature, using it to understand how horses think and communicate in order to work confidently and responsively with them, and create a bond so that the horse and rider can achieve a true union. It requires creating an environment in which the horse feels safe and secure. It requires a profound respect for the horse. It requires paying attention to countless non-verbal cues. It requires firmness, but also an abiding gentleness: whispering and all the compassion and intimacy that the word implies.

And all this brings me to the obvious conclusion: children are like horses. The point is never to break them, but to tame them in a way that preserves their essential, precious, and unique nature. This is the goal of good parenting and the goal of all who work with children in education, recreation, and other endeavors. Our children need to be companioned by people who are like horse whisperers. Shh! Please whisper.