The Soul of a Horse

by Joe Camp

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Author’s Note

  Foreword

  Introduction

  1. The Herd

  2. The Student

  3. The Language

  4. The Plot

  5. Raison d’Être

  6. The Starting Gate

  7. To Sleep Perchance to Dream

  8. The Wild Horse Model

  9. Bloodlines

  10. Survival

  11. Relationship

  12. Connection

  13. Off with the Shoes

  14. Nature Lives

  15. And Nature Dies

  16. Love Is the Gift of Oneself

  17. Horses Aren’t Us

  18. The Bond

  19. Feelings

  20. Sonny Boy and Painto

  21. Confined

  22. Cute Hitching Posts

  23. The Legacy of Sojourn

  24. The Big Round Circus Ball

  25. New Life

  26. Uh-oh

  27. Coming Down

  28. Mouse

  29. Empty Stalls…Again

  30. Part of the Herd

  31. Synthesis

  Afterwhinny

  Acknowledgments

  Photograph Credits

  Resources

  About the Author

  For Kathleen

  Copyright

  FOR EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER LOVED A HORSE…

  …OR LOVED THE IDEA OF LOVING A HORSE

  Often, in the early evening, when the stresses of the day are weighing heavy, I pack it in and head out to the pasture. I’ll sit on my favorite rock, or just stand, with my shoulders slumped, head down, and wait. It’s never long before I feel the magical tickle of whiskers against my neck, the elixir of warm breath across my ear, a restoring rub against my cheek. I have spoken their language and they have responded. And my problems have vanished. This book is for everyone who has never experienced this miracle.

  —Joe Camp

  FOREWORD

  Joe Camp will immediately settle your nerves. He will cause you to be comfortable in his presence and very soon you will feel as if you have known him most of his sixty-eight years. He has a warm smile and a shock of white hair covering a head that houses a brain most teachers would classify as extremely fertile.

  As I write this, I have known Joe less than a year, but it seems a heck of a lot longer. Of course I knew Benji and have marveled at how those stories were put together. But imagine how inadequate it makes me feel to realize how recently Joe came into horses. The man is a natural when it comes to understanding how animals tick and a genius at telling us their story.

  The Soul of a Horse will entertain you while it educates you. It will take you on a journey from the prehistoric horse to the modern-day domesticated partner that we all seek to better understand. Joe looks a bit like a Nevada buckaroo, can converse intelligently with the university professor, and is a Hollywood movie producer all rolled into one amazing human being. The Soul of a Horse is a must-read for those who love animals of any species.

  —Monty Roberts, author of the New York Times bestseller The Man Who Listens to Horses, award-winning natural trainer of championship horses, and creator of the world-renowned revolutionary equine training technique Join-Up

  INTRODUCTION

  My name is Cash. I am horse.

  I have been on this planet for some fifty-five million years. Well, not me personally. My ancestors. It all began in North America, somewhere near what is now called Utah. We hung out and evolved for forty-three million years, then we began to migrate, to South America, and across the Alaskan bridge to Asia, Europe, and Africa. And, eventually, some twelve million years after we left, we were brought back home by the Spanish conquistadors.

  We’ve been through it all. Ice Ages. Volcanic periods. Meteor strikes. Dinosaurs. You name it. And we survived.

  We’ve only been carrying man around for, oh, the last three to four thousand years. We’ve helped him farm, hunt, travel, and fight his enemies. We were helping man shape world history, winning wars for him, as far back as 1345 BC. We protected kings’ dominions in medieval times, carried knights into the Crusades, fought on European battlefields all the way into the early 1900s, and helped conquer and settle the American West.

  Throughout these millions of years, many of us have always remained wild and free. Even today, our herds roam free in Australia, New Zealand, Mongolia, France, Africa, the Greek Island of Cephalonia, Abaco in the Bahamas, Sable Island in Nova Scotia, the Canadian West, several states of the American West, Virginia, and North Carolina.

  And, until recently, we’ve done it all pretty much naked and in good relationship with man. But over the past several hundred years things began to change. These changes are actually inexplicable, given that our genetics and history are widely known. You see, we are not cave dwellers. We don’t like dark cozy rooms, clothing, iron shoes, heat, or air-conditioning.

  Humans seem to like all that. And because they do, they presume we should like it too. But we’re movers and shakers. In the wild we’ll move ten to twenty miles a day, keeping our hooves flexing and circulating blood, feeding our tiny little stomachs a little at a time, and keeping our own thermoregulatory systems in good working order.

  Think about it. Our survival through all those millions of years has built a pretty darned determined genetic system. And an excellent formula for survival. We are what you humans call prey animals, flight animals. We are not predators, like you. We have survived because we freak out at every little thing, race off and don’t look back. We are also herd animals. Not just because it’s fun to be around our pals, but because there is safety in numbers. And being prey animals, we consider safety just about the most important thing. But our idea of safety is not the same as yours. Our genetic history does not understand being all alone in a twelve-by-twelve stall. Even if it’s lined in velvet, in a heated barn, it’s away from the herd and by no stretch of the emotion or imagination is that a safe haven! Stress is all we get from such an experience.

  Stress. Big-time!

  Have you ever seen one of us, locked in a stall, pacing…pawing…swaying…gnawing? That horse is saying, Let me outta here!! I need to move! I need to circulate some blood!

  And about these metal shoes nailed to our feet. Have you ever seen a horse in the wild with metal shoes? I don’t think so. There is nothing more important to a prey animal than good feet. And ours have helped us survive for millions and millions of years. Rock-crushing hard and healthy.

  But once upon a time, back in medieval days, some king decided he would be safer if he built his castle and fortress up on top of a high hill or mountaintop. He still needed us to fight his wars, and move things and people around, but up there on top of the hill, there were no pastures like down in the valley. So he put us in small holding pens where we had to stand around all day, in our own pee and poop, and guess what happened to our feet. It wasn’t the moisture so much as the ammonia. Ate our feet up! So when they’d take us out onto those hard stone roads…well, you can imagine.

  The king’s blacksmith came up with the idea of nailing metal shoes onto our hooves, to keep them from disintegrating when pounding the stony roads. There was a much simpler, healthier solution, but, unfortunately, it escaped the king and his blacksmith. So all the king’s men and all the king’s horses went down the hill…and all the king’s peasants, living in the valley, where their horses were out in the field, happy as clams with strong and healthy hooves, saw these shiny, newfangled pieces of metal on the king’s horses, and what did they say? Surely the king knows best! We must have some of those shiny metal things for our own horses!

  And so it went for generation
s.

  You humans are funny that way. And you say we follow the herd.

  Joe and I have had long discussions about all this and he seems to be getting it. So I can shamelessly recommend what follows. Joe has spent much of his life trying to lure you into the heart and soul of a dog, and now he’s trying to lure you into the heart and soul of a horse. For it is there that he first began to comprehend the vast differences between us and you, and the kind of thinking that can bridge that gap and bind us together in relationship. My herd mates and I have taught him well. And, believe it or not, the philosophy behind everything he has learned doesn’t apply to just horses but to how you humans approach life as well. So whether or not you have a relationship with a horse, I think you’ll find this journey of discovery fascinating.

  I did.

  And I already knew the story.

  1

  The Herd

  The wind was blowing out of the east, which made the beast uneasy. It wasn’t normal. And anything that wasn’t normal made him uneasy. A stray sound. A flutter of a branch. The wind coming from the east.

  But there was a scent on this wind. A familiar scent. One embedded in the big stallion’s being for millions of years. He spun on his heels and sure enough, there it was, easily within sight, apparently not realizing the wind had shifted. The stallion screamed to the matriarch, who wheeled in flight.

  Like one, the herd followed, racing away at lightning speed, the great stallion bringing up the rear. They ran without looking back for just over a quarter of a mile before the leader slowed and turned.

  The predator, a small female cougar, had tired. She had been betrayed by the east wind. The horses had gotten away early, and now she was turning back.

  The stallion’s senses had saved them this time. The entire herd was alive and well because those very senses had helped their ancestors survive for some fifty-five million years. Prey, not predator, the horse must suspect everything. Every movement. Every animal. Every smell. Every shadow. All are predators until proven innocent. By taking flight, not staying to fight, they survive.

  And by staying together. Always together.

  How well the big stallion knew this. He had watched his mother, in her old age, lose this very special sense and drift away from the herd. It was excruciating. His responsibility was the herd. To keep them together, and moving. But his mother’s screams in the distance would live with him forever.

  The matriarch began to lick and chew, a sign that she was relaxing, that all was well. The stallion took her signal, and one by one, the herd began to graze again, nipping at the random patches of grass and the occasional weed. But they wouldn’t stay long. The matriarch would see to it. She would move them almost fifteen miles this day, foraging for food and water, staying ahead of wolves and cougars. And keeping themselves fit and healthy.

  2

  The Student

  I remember that it was an unusually chilly day for late May, because I recall the jacket I was wearing. Not so much the jacket, I suppose, as the collar. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing at full attention, and the collar was scratching at them.

  There was no one else around. Just me and this eleven-hundred-pound creature I had only met once before. And today he was passing out no clues as to how he felt about that earlier meeting, or about me. His stare was without emotion. Empty. Scary to one who was taking his very first step into the world of horses.

  If he chose to do so this beast could take me out with no effort whatsoever. He was less than fifteen feet away. No halter, no line. We were surrounded by a round pen a mere fifty feet in diameter. No place to hide. Not that he was mean. At least I had been told that he wasn’t. But I also had been told that anything is possible with a horse. He’s a prey animal, they had said. A freaky flight animal that can flip from quiet and thoughtful to wild and reactive in a single heartbeat. Accidents happen.

  I knew very little about this horse, and none of it firsthand. Logic said do not depend upon hearsay. Be sure. There’s nothing like firsthand knowledge. But all I knew was what I could see. He was big.

  The sales slip stated that he was unregistered. And his name was Cash.

  But there was something about him. A kindness in his eyes that betrayed the vacant expression. And sometimes he would cock his head as if he were asking a question. I wanted him to be more than chattel. I wanted a relationship with this horse. I wanted to begin at the beginning, as Monty Roberts had prescribed: Start with a blank sheet of paper, then fill it in.

  Together.

  I’m not a gambler. Certainty is my mantra. Knowledge over luck. But on this day I was gambling.

  I had never done this before.

  I knew dogs.

  I did not know horses.

  And I was going to ask this one to do something he had probably never been asked to do in his lifetime. To make a choice. Which made me all the more nervous. What if it didn’t work?

  What if his choice was not me?

  I WAS IN that round pen because a few weeks earlier my wife, Kathleen, had pushed me out of bed one morning and instructed me to get dressed and get in the car.

  “Where are we going?” I asked several times.

  “You’ll see.”

  Being the paranoid, suspicious type, whenever my birthday gets close, the ears go up and twist in the wind.

  The brain shuffled and dealt. Nothing came up.

  We drove down the hill and soon Kathleen was whipping in at a sign for the local animal shelter.

  Another dog? I wondered. We have four. Four’s enough.

  She drove right past the next turn for the animal shelter and pulled into a park. There were a few picnic tables scattered about. And a big horse trailer.

  The car jerked to a stop and Kathleen looked at me and smiled. “Happy birthday,” she said.

  “What?” I said. “What??”

  “You said we should go for a trail ride sometime.” She grinned. “Sometime is today.”

  Two weeks later we owned three horses.

  We should’ve named them Impulsive, Compulsive, and Obsessive.

  OUR HOUSE IS way out in the country and it came with a couple of horse stalls, both painted a crisp white, one of them covered with a rusty red roof. They were cute. Often, over the three years we had lived there, we could be found in the late afternoon sitting on our front porch, looking out over the stalls, watching the sun sink beneath the ridge of mountains to the west. One of us would say, “Those stalls surely seem empty.” Or “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were a couple of horses ambling back and forth down in the stalls?”

  Like a postcard.

  A lovely picture at sunset.

  With cute horse stalls.

  Lesson #1: Cute horse stalls are not adequate reason to purchase three horses.

  Never mind the six we own now.

  We had no idea what we were getting into. Thank God for a chance meeting with Monty Roberts. Well, not a real meeting. We were making the obligatory trip that new horse owners must make to Boot Barn when Kathleen picked up a California Horse Trader. As we sat around a table watching the kids chomp cheeseburgers, she read an article about Monty and passed it over to me. That’s how I came to find myself in a round pen that day staring off our big new Arabian.

  Monty is an amazing man, with an incredible story. His book The Man Who Listens to Horses has sold something like five and a half million copies and was on the New York Times bestseller list for fifty-eight weeks! You might know him as the man who inspired Robert Redford’s film The Horse Whisperer. I ordered his book and a DVD of one of his Join-Up demonstrations the minute I got home, and was completely blown away. In the video, he took a horse that had never had as much as a halter on him, never mind a saddle or rider, and in thirty minutes caused that horse to choose to be with him, to accept a saddle, and a rider, all with no violence, pain, or even stress to the horse!

  Thirty minutes!

  It takes “traditional” horse trainers weeks to get to tha
t point, the trainers who still tie a horse’s legs together and crash him to the ground, then spend days upon days scaring the devil out of him, proving to the horse that humans are, in fact, the predators he’s always thought we were. They usually get there, these traditional trainers, but it’s by force, and submission, and fear. Not trust or respect.

  Or choice.

  In retrospect, for me, the overwhelming key to what I saw Monty do in thirty minutes is the fact that the horse made the decision, the choice. The horse chose Monty as a herd member and leader. And from that point on, everything was built on trust, not force. And what a difference that makes.

  And it was simple.

  Not rocket science.

  I watched the DVD twice and was off to the round pen.

  It changed my life forever.

  This man is responsible for us beginning our relationship with horses as it should begin, and propelling us onto a journey of discovery into a truly enigmatic world. A world that has reminded me that you cannot, in fact, tell a book by its cover; that no “expert” should ever be beyond question just because somebody somewhere has given him or her such a label. That everybody and everything is up for study. That logic and good sense still provide the most reasonable answers, and still, given exposure, will prevail.

  My first encounter with this lesson was way back when I was making the original Benji movie, my very first motion picture.

  On a trip from Dallas to Hollywood to interview film labs and make a decision about which one to use, I discovered that intelligent, conscientious, hardworking people can sometimes make really big mistakes because they don’t ask enough questions, or they take something for granted, or, in some cases, they just want to take the easiest way. In this case it was about how our film was to be finished in the lab, and my research had told me that a particular method (we’ll call it Method B) was the best way to go. Everyone at every lab I visited, without exception, said, Oh no, no. Method A is the best way. When asked why, to a person, they all said, Because that’s the way it’s always been done! In other words, Don’t rock the boat.