Monty Roberts in 1998. He took a gentle approach to training horses and gained an international following Mike Nelson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
His approach was in contrast to centuries of conventional wisdom and won the enthusiastic approval of Queen Elizabeth II, with whom he became friends.
Monty Roberts, a celebrated horse trainer and best-selling author, whose humane, nonviolent methods for training wild and untamed horses were adopted by several generations of equestrian professionals, died on Friday at his home in Solvang, Calif. He was 91.
The death was announced by his daughter Debbie Roberts Loucks, who said the cause was complications from an autoimmune disease.
Defying 4,200 years of conventional horse-breaking wisdom based on aggressive and violent methods of forcing an animal into submission, Mr. Roberts believed that a horse trained without fear would ultimately be a superior worker and equine companion. Respect and cooperation would inevitably trump forced servitude.
He developed a silent, nonverbal language he called Equus based on gestures and eye contact to create a “Join Up” moment, where the young horse, quieting its flight instincts, quickly submitted to him and allowed him to saddle up and ride.
He spent decades at his Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang and traveled around the world, demonstrating and teaching his methods, training horses and writing books.
Mr. Roberts training a filly in 1997. Credit…John Storey/Getty Images
He estimated that he’d “started” rather than “broken” more than 11,000 horses.
Some traditionalists considered him a liar and fraud, espousing dangerous and ineffective tactics. There were others, however, called horse whisperers, such as Buck Brannaman, the model for the book and movie “The Horse Whisperer,” who embraced trust-based natural methods over harsh and cruel treatment. But Mr. Roberts was an early proponent of the kinder, gentler approach which he eventually believed would work with human beings as well.
“You have to give him credit. He was one of the first people to get away from the rough stuff, tying a horse to a pole and sacking it out,” Temple Grandin, the noted animal behaviorist and proponent of the humane treatment of livestock, said of Mr. Roberts. “He was really observant out in the field and got to thinking about what a horse really has to say to you. A lot of people are good at reading horses, but he was a pioneer in telling people there were better ways to train horses.”
Unlike some trainers, she added, he demonstrated his methods.
Mr. Roberts, who was riding confidently at age 3, was such an adept rider as a child that he became a regular stand-in and stunt double for dozens of Hollywood films.
He took the saddle for the likes of Roddy McDowall, Mickey Rooney, Charlton Heston and, donning a wig, even doubled for Elizabeth Taylor in “National Velvet.” Mr. Roberts competed in stock horse competitions beginning at age 4 and became a rodeo champion before he became a teenager. He went on to win nine world championships in the show ring.
His father, a horse trainer, was a proponent of conventional horse-breaking techniques that employed fear and punishment to bring a young mustang into submission.
At a young age, Mr. Roberts recounted in his 1996 autobiography, “The Man Who Listens to Horses,” he recoiled at these methods and when he was just 7, he showed his father how effective he had been treating a young stallion with kindness to instill trust.
His father flew into a rage, screamed “What the hell am I raising here?” and beat his son with a chain so severely he had to be hospitalized. The young boy vowed to never share his unconventional ideas with his father again.
But he remained convinced that there was a better way to work with wild horses. When he was 13, he went out to the high desert in northern Nevada alone and spent days observing herds of wild horses. He watched as the dominant mare used body language and visual cues to control young stallions. This nonverbal communication astounded the young man but convinced him that this “language” was a superior means of working with wild horses.
“In time, I would grasp just how exact a language it was,” he wrote. “There were precise messages, whole phrases and sentences that always meant the same thing, always had the same effect. If I understood how to do it, I could effectively cross over the boundary between human (the ultimate fight animal) and horse (the flight animal).”
Among his disciples was Queen Elizabeth II, who had read articles in equestrian magazines about Mr. Roberts’s methods. Her love of horses was well known, and she had longed to find a less violent method for training the animals.
In April 1989, she invited Mr. Roberts to visit her and demonstrate his unconventional ideas. So impressed was she that she brought him into her royal equestrian orbit as an adviser and friend.
“She believed that no one should ever say to any human being or animal, ‘You do what I tell you to do or I’ll hurt you,’” Mr. Roberts told The Times in a 2022 interview. “When the queen was with horses, she was a horse person. She didn’t want to be the queen.”
She urged him to write a book to share his innovative methods, and the resulting book, “The Man Who Listens to Horses,” went on to sell nearly six million copies and remain on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year.
He wrote several more books and was the subject of four documentaries. In 2011 the queen dubbed him an honorary member of the Royal Victorian Order, an honor to recognize exceptional personal service to the royal family. This royal imprimatur served to quiet many of his critics. The 2024 documentary “The Cowboy and the Queen,” by Andrea Nevins, focused on the unusual partnership. “She completely changed my life,” he said of the queen.
Marvin Earl Roberts Jr. was born on May 14, 1935, in Salinas, Calif. His father trained and boarded horses, and his mother, Marguerite, gave horseback riding lessons. Marvin was on horseback soon after he learned to walk. He could walk, trot and canter a horse by age 3.
Though he managed to go to school and compete in football and wrestling, his classrooms were the corrals, paddocks, racetracks and rodeo rings where he spent nearly all his childhood.
He received a football scholarship to California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. Instead of playing football, he joined the rodeo team and won two national rodeo championships. While in high school, he proposed to Patricia Gail, whom he’d known since childhood, and they married in June 1956.
His wife and the couple’s three children, Ms. Loucks, Marty and Laurel Roberts, survive him, as do three grandchildren.
After graduation, he managed horse facilities until he and his wife established the Flag Is Up Farms, where he devoted himself to teaching his Join Up principles. His troubled relationship with his father was never resolved, and in the 1990s he chose to legally change his first name to Monty. But after his father’s death, Mr. Roberts was able to make peace with his volatile childhood.
“I don’t hate my father,” he said in a 1997 BBC documentary. “If it wasn’t for my father’s really tough handling of horses, I probably never would have been dedicated enough to do what I’m doing. So, in a way he did me a great favor by swinging the pendulum so far toward pain and restraint that he caused me to have to find a better way.”
He believed his trust-based methods could help troubled children and war veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Working with a psychotherapist, he developed a relationship-building curriculum that was used in schools nationwide.
Working and teaching well into his 80s, Mr. Roberts never tired of his quest to remove violence from horse training.
“By observing the horse’s actions and reactions, I developed an inner ear,” he wrote in his autobiography. “I believed the horses were telling me something and, most important, I learned, with rare exceptions, never to believe the people connected with the horse. The rider was not lying, simply not listening. A good trainer can hear a horse speak to him. A great trainer can hear him whisper.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/02/obituaries/monty-roberts-dead.html?smid=nytcore-android-share
