Ever since I read two books by Monty Roberts, I was interested in this one Shy Boy. I’ve had a copy now for a while and was reminded of it just the other night after watching a documentary about horse training, where this man used body language in a round pen to “start” young horses and get them to accept tack and rider sans force. This book contains a lot of material that is in his other books, about his methods and his personal history. As a young man out in the brush he had learned by watching wild horses how they communicate with each other, and incoporated that into his horse training. He said he used these methods to get mustangs in the wild herd to accept him, but nobody really believed it. He always had the dream to go out and gentle a wild horse in situ, then bring it back to prove to everybody what he could do. Finally did that as an older man, this book has the story documented in photographs (there was also a film made).
The basic premise is that he took three horses, a film team, photographer and ranch hands to assist, all out to the wild herd. The mustang had actually been adopted by him earlier from a BLM roundup (since mustangs are now protected and it’s illegal to interact with or catch them), but instead of becoming accustomed to people the horse was put back in a free-roaming band on someone’s huge tract of private land, with horses that weren’t handled. This is the herd they approached. They cut the mustang out from the group and then Roberts followed him on horseback for three days straight (swapping his own mount each day) until the mustang finally quit fleeing and showed signs of submission. Then he was able to approach it, introduce the tack, and ride it back to the ranch. The horse was trained to work cattle and lived on the ranch for almost a year. Then Roberts decided to give the horse a chance to take back his freedom. Would he prefer to live with the wild horses again, or stay with humans? Shy Boy was part of a working team rounding up some cattle, when the mustang herd was in view they released him to see what he would do. This was all captured on film as well.
It’s a great story. And the photographs are very nice, although feel a tad old in quality nowadays (some are a bit grainy). I really enjoyed reading this book and got through it in just a few sittings, but some parts were a bit confusing or disappointing to me. For one, the author doesn’t actually ride the mustang himself at first. He’s the one who pursues it in the wild until it relents, and puts the first rope and bridle etc on. But then another man gets on the horse and rides it back to the ranch. He didn’t explain why. Did he just not want to take the risk himself? And then there’s a large section in the middle of the book that’s not about Shy Boy at all. It’s about how the author worked with a racehorse that was terrified of starting gates. Which was interesting, but felt a little off track. I would have rather read more about Shy Boy’s adjustment to living in captivity (apparently he grew to really like kids)- but Roberts wasn’t around for that. Shy Boy was kept and trained at someone else’s place while the author was off traveling doing his horse clinics for almost a year. So- I did like this book, it just wasn’t quite what I had expected all the way through.
