Monty Roberts died Saturday evening August 1 at Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang, California, with his wife Patricia at his side. He was 91. No cause of death was given.
Roberts spent 91 years proving that a horse doesn't need to be broken, it needs to be listened to. Born in Salinas, California in 1935 as the son of a horse trainer who used the traditional six-thousand-year-old methods, Roberts spent his youth watching the wild mustangs of Nevada and learning a different language.
He called the technique he developed Join-Up, a trust-based process in which a human earns a horse's willingness rather than demanding it.
Queen Elizabeth II learned of his methods in 1989, invited him to demonstrate them and became his most famous champion. He was appointed to the Royal Victorian Order.
He was also a child stunt double from the age of four, stood in for Elizabeth Taylor during the filming of National Velvet, taught James Dean to ride for East of Eden and bought a failed auction yearling for $40,000 that he sold for $175,000, the horse raced as Alleged and won back-to-back Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe titles in 1977 and 1978.
His memoir The Man Who Listens to Horses spent 58 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold more than five million copies and inspired the novel and Robert Redford film. He was the horse whisperer, and he would have objected to the word whisper, because what he did was listen.