Robert Redford 
The Manual 2.0 
A River Runs Through It 
Profile
Horse Sense
Robert Redford may be everyone’s image of a horse whisperer these days, but Del Rio native Ernesto Rojas Serna is the real thing.
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Although you might think the notion of sweet-talking a horse would be about as welcome in Texas as a burr under the saddle, the gentle method has already found plenty of converts here. Nevertheless, says Rojas, many horse owners don’t appear to have gotten the word. And when they see him work for the first time, the experience can be unexpectedly emotional.
I first saw Rojas work with a problem horse last winter, surrounded by an audience of veteran horse owners on the grounds of the Travis County Exposition Center in Austin. It was like a cross between a magic show, performance art, and group therapy. But Rojas rejects any suggestion that what he does is magic or New Age. “I might make things look easy out there,” he says, “but a lot of the history of the amansador is written in blood.” When he was twelve, he recalls, the first horse he trained dragged him through the mesquite brush and left him with a cracked sternum.
Like most new-method trainers, Rojas uses a round pen, or parada, for his training. “The round pen is my canvas,” he says. “And this is my paintbrush”—he holds up a long quirt (riding whip) with a horsehair extension. He doesn’t use it to hit the horse but simply to establish touch when the horse won’t let him get close. Rojas also uses a shorter quirt, with a horsetail extension, to imitate the swishing sound made by a horse’s tail. He wears a cordless microphone to explain to the audience what’s happening, translating the horse’s behavior as well as his own actions.
That afternoon in Austin, Rojas was working with a wild-eyed paint named Puddin’ Head Dude, nicknamed P.H. His owners, Terry and Karen Akins, didn’t know what to do with him. Once their homebred pride and joy, the horse had lately become their nightmare. They had lent him to friends for several months, and he had come back a basket case, unridable and dangerous.
When P.H. came trotting into the ring, flinging his head suspiciously, he definitely looked like trouble. To get his attention and respect, Rojas imitated the sounds and movements of a dominant horse, sending P.H. running around the ring by flinging a lariat at his hindquarters, snorting aggressively, flicking the quirt like a horse tail, and kicking up dust. “I’m becoming top horse,” he explained. P.H. was moving at a nervous canter, threatening to charge or kick, until Rojas—continuing to use body language aided by the quirt, then moving on to clicks and clucks—was able to get him to change directions on cue.
“I think he’s ready for human language,” Rojas said. And then came the moment that separates the new trainers from the old ways—and often moves observers to tears. “Whoa,” said Rojas quietly, turning his back to P.H., and the horse stopped instantly. Rojas walked into the center of the ring, and the horse came up behind him and followed him like a shadow, his head almost touching Rojas’ shoulder.
“What you just saw was union,” Rojas said. And within moments, as the horse stood quietly, he had put on a halter and then a saddle. When he climbed into the saddle, P.H. was as still as a statue, his ears perked eagerly, as though waiting to hear what Rojas wanted next. Behind me, Terry Akins was amazed. “I can’t believe it’s the same horse,” he said. Another horse owner, who was sitting next to me, was almost too choked up to speak.
These moments of union, as Rojas calls them, are so dramatic that he and other trainers using similar methods are sometimes regarded with a combination of awe and suspicion. Monty Roberts has had people faint during his clinics. “People want magic in their lives,” says Rojas. “But there’s no magic involved in this. For me, it’s about communication.” And indeed, there are no quick fixes for horses who have learned bad habits; that afternoon marked only the beginning of P.H.’s rehabilitation. Rojas always ends his demonstrations with a larger message, telling his listeners, “All creatures need a gentle touch.” What he’d like people to learn, he says, is “how to communicate with everybody who’s different than they are.”
It’s a message he fears could get lost in all the hype about horse whispering. Although you might think he’d welcome the chance to spread his method, he says he’s trying to resist the temptation to make hay, as it were, from all the publicity surrounding the film.
For now, he’s running a stable for problem horses in Houston and doing some work for the railroad. He’s lobbying to improve conditions for horses, and he’s planning to put out a video demonstrating his method and to publish a newsletter called “The Gentle Spirit,” the proceeds from both of which he’ll donate to various wild horse refuges. And he’s been talking with Austin public-speaking coach Lynn Segall, who saw his first clinic last year and was so impressed that he decided Rojas could be spreading his message to a wider audience—say, to corporate types who have trouble communicating with their employees. “I can see Ernesto using his skills for corporate retreats,” Segall says, “or any situation where you want to inspire a group and bring them together.”
For gifted horse trainers like Rojas, there’s little point in ruing the irony that their methods have come so late in our relationship with horses. They simply have to adapt their message to a world in which getting along with horses is a gift rather than a necessity. Teaching CEOs about kinder and gentler methods of communicating may not be exactly the romantic vocation Redford and company had in mind. But the message of the horse whisperers may not be too late, after all, if the meaning finds its way beyond the world of horses.
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