Buck Pt. 2

As you may have noticed, I've found the stallion episode in the movie Buck to be a source of much reflection.

I may be going out on a limb here, but I believe there's a place in our dealings with horses for righteous anger. These creatures are not cause-and-effect Pavlovian automata who ineluctably respond in such and such a way because of their treatment and training.

We live in a world where the creative principle is a preference for good over evil, order over chaos, life over death, health over disease, cooperation over conflict, love over hate. Every living being knows this, and although all are caught in a web of necessity where death and destruction must be tolerated or even meted out, none are satisfied with this condition. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail until now. (Romans 8:22)

There is a community of morality (as it were) which subsists, not only among humans, but among all creatures, and especially among creatures who live together ostensibly in friendship, such as humans and horses.

When a horse steps radically outside of that community, one can treat him like a passive conglomeration of species-specific characteristics, shaped by experiences, and powerless to direct his own life. "This horse is this way because he has never been taught respect, etc."

Or one can say, "Damn it, you bastard, I hate you, what did I ever do to you? So what if you're all so instinctive and quick, I can't help it if I'm a measly pathetic human and stupid as well, and I don't care what anyone did to you in the past, that doesn't give you the right to turn around and terrify others." And then you can throw things at him and shout a lot. Which is not in the least tiny bit like the 2x4 treatment.

No one got angry at the colt when he attacked the cowboy. It was all, "Well, no wonder, there you go, that's what happens when you have a horse like that." Say you were a criminal who had been orphaned and then raised by a gang on the streets and taught that aggression was a virtue and retribution a duty - what if you then murdered a boy because he was wearing the wrong colors and looked at you wrong. Who's telling more truth - the person who says, "Well, there's no way he could do any better, he's a dud because of his background - it would be kinder to execute him"? Or the person who rages, "How could you? How could you kill my son who never harmed you? Would you like it if I killed you? You have destroyed my life!"?

I'm making the claim that horses understand righteous anger. And maybe they understand an angry person a lot better than they do people who seem to go randomly from calm to predatory, from fearful to  hostile, from passive to controlling. We are not angry with our prey, only with our fellows.

I'm saying that, for all their terrifying strangeness, horses occupy the same moral sphere as we do. And by "moral," I don't mean a set of rules - I mean our shared inheritance of a world fallen from paradise, and a shared desire to in some way, as much as possible, return there.

I absolutely don't blame anyone for not taking on responsibility for the horse in the movie. I would not be willing to do so. But it's an eye-opener to me to see how profoundly that horse was treated as a mere product of its circumstances - how there was no expectation that an appeal could be made to something inside the horse, something which has nothing to do with training or usefulness. If that horse had to be destroyed, as it did unless someone was willing to make it a huge priority in their life, then please don't let him go down as a "good little horse" manqué, but as a brilliant, misguided, desperate criminal who could have been a contender.

That horse got me rattled about George again. I was out feeding last night, and George - who gets very bent out of shape about food when it's cold and wet - was crowding me. I didn't like the way he was acting and told him so. I may have stamped my foot. I said, "Why don't you go vent your frustration by chasing the mares like usual?" So he did. And I was given space and peace to put his food in his bucket.

Circumstances prevented that horse from amounting to much in his life, but through the movie, he'll reach many more people than if his life had gone smoothly. Perhaps he'll end up fulfilling his potential in this way.

One thing I've learned is that we're klutzy and clumsy and slow-witted, and that if horses give us a break, it's not because we've learned to be smart, it's that they've decided to be kind.

Buck

Ok, hands up everyone who's seen the movie Buck Brannaman. Cos I'd really like to know what y'all think of it.

Thanks to my internet having been fixed (fingers crossed), so that the download speed is now like 2.65 megawotsits instead of only 0.14, I was at last able to view the movie all the way through.

Buck is a documentary about Buck Brannaman, a real-life "horse whisperer," who helped Robert Redford with Redford's role in the eponymous movie.

Buck Brannaman is a real likeable guy who has some fine things to say about horses. For example: Don't be critical - Don't discourage them or they'll shut down. There's some other cool stuff in the movie, such as the lady who works cows with her dressage horses, as she says it brings "meaning and purpose" into the dressage training because the horses know it helps them with their cattle work, which they love.

There's a sad incident, however, involving a three-year old orphan stud colt, who had been bottle raised and then, when his owner had a bad accident when he was three months old, had been left to his own devices for the next three years. After his difficult birth, he had lain without breathing for some time until he was revived, and there was some thought that this oxygen deprivation had left him mentally impaired.

This youngster was extremely aggressive, to the point where he would attack vehicles and charge fences to bite people on the other side.

Nothing daunted, Buck brings him into the round pen to see what can be done. From his horse, Buck ropes the colt's ankle and starts to be able to control his movements. From there, Buck's cowboy assistant is able to go up to the colt, sack him out, saddle, mount, and ride him. So far so good.

But on the ground, the horse continues to be a menace. Buck blames the owner, for allowing the horse's behavior to escalate to this point, and for not having had him gelded sooner. Buck says orphan horses are the worst, because they're spoiled and not taught respect as they would be if they were with their mothers. He's in a pen with the colt and has to continually fend off his aggressive charges by flapping sticks at him.

Later, they bring him back to the round pen. The colt has a halter and rope on, and the cowboy is holding the rope in one hand and a blanket in the other. It's not clear whether he's using the blanket as a kind of goad to make the horse move forward or whether he's trying to sack him out some more. They move around the pen a little, the cowboy apparently having a little success in getting the horse to move forward on command.

Then - seemingly out of the blue - the colt leaps forward, bites the cowboy's head, knocks him to the ground, and leaves the scene to go over to the other side of the pen.

The cowboy is bloodied and needs stitches in his head. The owner is distraught and realizes her only option is to have the horse destroyed. Buck doesn't disagree. Someone - sooner or later - is going to get killed.

The horse's death sentence is sealed, and he is hauled off in a truck. The next day, Buck talks to the other participants in the clinic about what happened. He says that human beings let the horse down. He says that perhaps the horse was a little retarded after being deprived of oxygen, but that this doesn't mean he had to end so badly. With the proper training, he could have been a good little horse, quietly "packing" someone around, leading a life which would have been of use to himself and to others.

Life doesn't have the option of instant replay, but Netflix streaming does, and so I replayed these scenes over and over until I got a sense of what really happened.

First of all: Buck in the pen with the colt. He has driven the colt off to the far side of the pen, using his flag-ended stick. As Buck talks to the owner, the colt sidles up behind him, chewing and licking. Buck senses his approach out of the corner of his eye and instead of engaging the colt and acknowledging his pacific intent, immediately turns round and starts aggressively flailing the air with the stick to drive the colt away. The colt instantly reacts by returning the aggression, rearing, striking, and trying to get at Buck.

Later: in the pen with the cowboy. The young horse repeatedly gives the cowboy a chance. He turns to face him, stands his ground, expresses his displeasure at the blanket onslaught. Finally, the cowboy approaches him directly. The horse takes a step backwards and stops, looking at the cowboy (who incidentally is wearing dark glasses). The cowboy ignores the horse's gesture of retreat, as well as his intentionality to connect, and moves in closer in an unmistakeably predatory manner, holding the blanket like a weapon.

Faster than you can blink, the horse leaps forward, mouth open and lunges toward the cowboy's head.

The humans present at the clinic, observing the terrifying attacks, presumably saw what I saw on my first watch-through of the scenes - chaos and fury being unleashed with no prior warning. It took me many re-plays until I could see more clearly what was going on. I imagine horses are able to see at that speed all the time. 

The first thing that comes to mind is that you can see the limitations of technique here. Any one method is going to come up against a situation where it is not the best method. This young horse was clearly far too dangerous to work with in a confined space, never mind at the end of a short rope. John Lyons would have fared better with his liberty work in a 60' round pen, working the horse from a safe distance. Mark Rashid's "Old Man" would have done even better with his technique of leaving the horse - for weeks if necessary - alone in a large pasture, visiting him twice a day only to feed him and dictate the terms under which he may eat. And where is it written that you must go from three-years-with-no-handling to sacked-out-and-under-saddle in one weekend clinic?

Secondly, far from being weak-brained, this horse is clearly extremely intelligent, extremely proud, and extremely courageous. Many times he expresses his willingness to work with Buck or the cowboy. But he has zero tolerance for any show of aggression on their part, meting out retribution with lightning speed. He tolerates the cowboy saddling and riding him on their first encounter, because the cowboy's behavior is very different when he knows that Buck controls the horse by means of the ankle rope. Because the cowboy is reassured that someone has control of the horse, aggression is absent from his demeanor.

Thirdly, I don't buy the orphan horse theory, which I have heard before. Here's my theory, or rather my working hypothesis: the problem with orphan foals is not that they are spoiled and fail to learn respect from their mothers. The problem is that they learn fear-aggression from being turned out with older horses without the protection of their mother. The two dozen nurse mare foals at Twelve Oaks in Mississippi were mollycoddled and coochycooed like you wouldn't believe, but they all turned out mild-mannered and pleasant, without anyone having to "sort them out." And here - according to my hypothesis - is why: they were all babies together, with no mean old grownups to chase them or steal their food.

The colt in the movie fit the bill - he had been turned out at the age of three months in a field with a bunch of adults and left to fend for himself. He could have become a wretched doormat, but because of his strong personality, instead he became a spitfire. If Buck or the cowboy had acknowledged his pride and his sense of self, I think they could have ended up working with him. 

Now, that's not to say I'd ever be willing to work with such a horse, or that it would have been safe for his owner to take him home. But, as Buck himself said in his post-incident talk to the clinic, your horse is a mirror of yourself - and Buck, for all his kindness, is unable to see something in the horse, perhaps because he can't see it in himself. 

This renegade colt was close to my heart as, of course, Bridget is an orphan foal, and George was/is fear-aggressive and studdish. I believe that given a large paddock, a lot of time, and a willingness to stand down, someone (not me, thanks!) could ultimately have turned that horse into a super star.

I turned to Youtube to see Hempfling at work with aggressive stallions, to compare that with what I'd seen on the movie. Two things stick out - Hempfling's willingness to stand down and back off, and his laser-like awareness of the horse as a unique individual in that moment. Compare that to Buck's cowboy's approach to the horse as a dangerous object.

Finally, I think, it all gets down to still - despite the kindler, gentler ways - treating the horse as an object of use to be controlled. When you look at the faces of the horses in the movie, you don't observe the stress, the anxiety, the pain, the sorrow that are so often seen in horses who are supposedly doing magnificent things. But neither do you see anything in the way of sparkly-eyed engagement.

(OK, yes, Buck's horses can canter side-passes, and I can get on my horse, period. Thanks for pointing that out.)