Monty Roberts: A Real Horse Whisperer
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Monty Roberts: A Real Horse Whisperer is a 1997 documentary film about the life and work of horse trainer Monty Roberts.
Roberts relates how his father used methods that were abusive, in that they were intended to break the will of horses and destroy their ability to resist the demands of human beings. The elders in Monty Roberts's circle maintained adamantly that kinder methods could only lead to disaster, because a horse treated so as to make it a friend could easily and unpredictably turn on its master. Horses could only be handled safely, they maintained, if they had been too strongly intimidated by human beings to ever offer them any resistance.
Roberts could not square the evidence of his own senses with the belief system of his elders and eventually split with his father over this issue. He felt great sympathy for the plight of the horses and urged the use of methods that would put the horses in a frame of mind to be cooperative with human beings.