Watch an amazing demonstration of Horse Whispering at The Cowboy Corral.

Civitan Park: At The Cowboy Corral adjacent to Hwy. 69
Saturday: TBA
Sunday: TBS

What is a Horse Whisperer?

A horse whisperer is a horse trainer who adopts a sympathetic view of the motives, needs, and desires of the horse, based on modern horse behavior. The term goes back to the early nineteenth century when an Irish horseman, Daniel Sullivan, made a name for himself in England by rehabilitating horses that had become vicious and intractable due to abuse or accidental trauma.

He kept his methods secret, but people who managed to observe him noticed that he would stand face to face with the troubled horse. They seemed to think that he must be saying something to the horse in a way the horse could understand and accept because the horses were quickly gentled by his mysterious techniques. His techniques were passed over to Willis J. Powell, who learned them well  and   traveled widely in 

the America to help the most seriously traumatized horses. His fame spread, and more and more people sought help from him. He wrote his own book and later cooperated with John Soloman Rarey. Rarey was protective of the tradition he had thus learned, and in early versions of his own book did not reveal how the most severely traumatized horses were salvaged by the methods originated by Sullivan and passed to him by Powell. He did, however, always give Powell full credit for his methods of gentling horses. Finally he became convinced that it was better to reveal the secret method to the world than to risk its loss. That method is fairly faithfully represented in the novel and motion picture The Horse Whisperer. Today, numerous trainers and clinicians call themselves horse whisperers, often building