Even though horse trainer Dan M. “Buck” Brannaman is as skilled with his tongue as he is in the saddle, Cindy Meehl’s new documentary on him Buck implies there is still more under his cowboy hat than he initially lets on.

 

 

Brannaman is a master of natural horsemanship, where a rider trains a horse, not by breaking it, but by looking at the relationship the way the animal sees it. To a casual observer, it’s almost

as if Brannaman can telepathically communicate and command the horse. Nicholas Evans consulted with Brannaman while he was writing The Horse Whisperer, and director-actor Robert Redford relied on the horseman’s skills when he made the film adaptation of the book.

 

From listening to him talk about the discipline he practices, however, it quickly becomes obvious that his equestrian magic comes more from pragmatism than potions. The techniques he and his predecessors Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance use are based in simple logic: If you can think like the horse, it’s a lot easier to interact with it.

This technique also requires compassion on the part of the rider and earning the horse’s trust. As Buck demonstrates, Brannaman’s gift for empathy in some ways belies his difficult upbringing. As a youngster, he and his brother were rodeo stars, but their father used savage beatings as part of the boys training. Eventually, the lads had to be moved to a loving foster home, and as the film documents, both grew up to be stable adults with solid families of their own.

From listening to Brannaman on a phone call from Oklahoma City, it’s quickly obvious that as good as the film is, Buck only captures a portion of the man’s life and philosophy. While he speaks quietly, he’s certainly got a lot to say about how horses can be the mirror images of the people they encounter.

You’ve not a stranger to documentaries. You’ve made a series of training videos, so what was it like to make a film with somebody else in charge?

Well, really it was easy for me because I had told Cindy from the beginning that if she was going to do this, she needed to understand that I wasn’t going to change anything about my days, that my loyalty had to go with people that go to my clinics.

 

So in that, she had to be pretty clever in how she filmed it because I said, “I’m not going to position a certain way. I’m not going to be standing somewhere you want me to stand and do anything. I’m going to go about my day, and you’re going to have to anticipate when something kind of neat is going to happen with the horse. You’re going to have to plan ahead and be there.”

With horses, when something kind of neat does happen, it doesn’t happen again. That moment’s gone, and if you missed it, and you weren’t there, it’s gone forever. So it was quite a challenge for her, but the longer she went, the better she got at. When pretty soon, once in a while, I’d look over at her because I knew something kind of neat just happened with the horse or with somebody else. I’d look over at her, and she’d be kind of “thumbs up” and she’d be saying, “I got it.”

That reminds me of working with children because my nephews were little, my brother would try to videotape the moment, and the kids would immediately clam up. Is it the same way with horses?

The horse is indifferent to that thing other than if you’re around horses that haven’t been handled a bunch, once a fellow with a camera walks into an arena, it looks pretty odd to a horse. You have to figure if a horse survives by being really attentive and keen on those things and noticing things that might turn into a threat.

They’re used to seeing a human in one form, and then they see a human with this thing on top of his shoulder, every once in a while, a horse will give it a long look.

When Nicholas Evans, the author of The Horse Whisperer, or others describe you, they almost make you sound like a Zen master, but hearing your own voice describing your training techniques, it seems like a lot of what you’ve done is more based on practicality or noticing something that’s obvious.

It really is. A lot of people used the term “common sense approach.” And that doesn’t sound too bad to me. But it’s interesting that they call it common sense, and that would infer that it happens all the time.

I don’t know what it is, but it’s logical. It is a sensible approach to working with horses, and obviously it’s about practice. It’s about how much time you spend at it and how much devotion you have for it.

With the techniques that you and fellow natural horsemanship trainers Ray Hunt and Tom Dorrance have developed, don’t they demand more of a person in the relationship with the horse?

They do, and really, that’s in the essence of this. You realize if you’ve been at this awhile the changes you have to make within yourself to get to the point to where you are appealing to horses, to where you’re not threatening to them and they accept you, and where they even prefer to be around you. There are a lot of changes you have to make within yourself to get to that point. And that’s what people are looking for when they go to my clinics. And it was interesting to me how our goal from the very beginning from this documentary was that it would have an appeal and that it would touch the hearts of people that are from town, that don’t have horses or have no background in livestock that they would still get the point to what this is all about.

And that was the challenge, and Cindy did a great job. It’s been really well-received in urban areas.

You’re talking to someone who writes computer instructions for a living. When I heard you describe equestrian terms to newcomers, I said, “This guy’s going to put me out of a job.” You did such a fine job explaining these concepts for people who are new to animals.

It is true. There are so many parallels in relationships that people did get the point in this. Some would think, “I could have a different point of view about my kids.” Maybe someone else would think it would apply to their wife or their husband or their aunt or their dad or their mom. It’s interesting how there’s a message for everybody if it’s important to you.

Not everybody is searching to improve on themselves, but it’s surprising to me how many people are, actually.

One particularly haunting bit from the film is the old footage of a horse being broken.

Yeah.

And me being a lily-livered city person, it kind of shocked me. It struck me that wouldn’t the techniques that you, Tom Dorrance or Ray Hunt used result in better longevity for a horse?

Oh, absolutely. You know there was a time, it sounds funny, but years ago when Tom Dorrance was just getting on to these things that he taught all of us, that there were people who thought that he literally hypnotized horses, that he was practicing some sort of witchcraft. It was that out there to people.

And isn’t it crazy that all he was advocating was just finding a way to work with a horse as if you got to make up the rules to help him understand? That in a nutshell was really what motivated him. And it was sort of the foundation for his life’s study: find a way to get the horse to cooperate with you and work with you and not be troubled.

And yet he was so remarkable with what he could accomplish because instead of kind of forcing his will on the horse and trying to make it happen, he’d fix it up so that his idea would become the horse’s. Things do look easy then, but that isn’t any different with people. If you’re wanting someone to do a certain thing, and you can shape it up to where it’s them thinking it was your idea—that they think they’ve come up with this stroke of genius—and you’ve shaped it up that way, they all you have to do is tell them, “You’ve really got it going on. I wish I had thought of that.”

And yet, it’s the direction you wanted him to go to begin with while everybody wins.

In the film, it’s impressive how open you are about the difficulties you and your brother had as children. Was it tough in both your book The Faraway Horses and in this documentary to talk about this stuff?

You know, I think it was harder in the book because in that I was not a trained author by any stretch, so I had to rewrite the book quite a few times before I was satisfied with it. It seemed like every time I’d go over it, through all these years of working with horses, I’ve learned how to live in the moment. As I would be rewriting my book, that would sort of require me to immerse myself in the past again and tell the story and put myself there. I’d get done with the rewrite, and for two or three days, I’d be kind of melancholy, just kind of bummed out, you know.

And then I’d shake it off and get on with my life. So, every time the publisher would say, “We need to know you,” I’d think, “Oh, no.” So I was pretty relieved when it was all done.

But I’ve found that over the years in these clinics that people will come the first day of the clinic, and they’re intimidated because they know who I am, and I’ve been around a long time. And they think because you have something of a reputation, that you’re not approachable, that you’re something other than what you are.

I’ve found that being able to share with people my vulnerabilities and my imperfect life and my personal experiences seemed to lead them to feel that I obviously trusted them to share something very intimate about myself. And that really opens people up to where they’re open to me.

Well then the teacher-student relationship is off and running, so I can get something done. In small doses over the years, I’ve done quite a bit of stuff like that with folks, so it wasn’t so unnatural for me to do it once we started doing this documentary.

Buck is coming out at an intriguing time because bullying and its consequences are coming back into the headlines again even though the phenomenon never really went away.

Right. Believe me, I got bullied when I was a kid. I don’t often tell people this but—you’d probably find it hard to believe because I talk for a living—I stuttered so horribly when I was a little fellow in school. So it was especially surreal when I saw that movie with my family the other day, The King’s Speech. Hey, man, I feel you brother.

It was a hard thing for me to work through. I know now looking back, you could probably attribute most of it to the stressful environment I was living in that caused me to stutter. Every night, I would say words over and over again, thousands of times. I’d usually take two words a night. And I’d fall asleep with those two words until I could say them. It seemed once I had done that, then I kind of owned those two words. I could say them and then nothing else. Over a period of a few hundred nights, my vocabulary started to grow in terms of words that I could get out without stammering and stuttering.

But it was tough. I got made fun of, and it wasn’t cool.

Wow! But with stammering, there’s no relationship with intelligence because Thomas Jefferson, for example, stammered.

Well, it’s interesting you’d say that because back in the day, when they first decided that I couldn’t speak, they would put me in, for the lack of a better term, like a special ed class. And then their entire therapy would be that they’d just plop me down to the table, and we’d all have to read out of a book aloud.

Well, crap. I already knew I couldn’t speak. And then reading to everybody made it worse. And then being in front of other kids reading and stuttering made it worse yet. And then the teacher would just look at me and shake her head. Here I was a third or fourth grader, and even then I was thinking, this is stupid. This isn’t working. I was a bright kid. I got good grades.

And the some of the other kids, we’d been put together, and let’s just say they weren’t so bright. So then it really was demeaning to me because I thought, you know what? They’re not helping me at all. That’s when I just starting practicing on my own.

I actually thought the scenes in Buck where the violent horse was brought in were really helpful. As a viewer and as a film critic, it seems as if so much of what you is easy. It helped to see two things: 1. Owning an animal is a huge responsibility. 2. What you do takes serious discipline, so not just anybody can pull it off.

I’m pleased to hear you say that, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because in this: I had hoped by this piece being in there on this horse—granted, that situation with that horse is sort of an anomaly. That’s one in 50,000 horses. That started out with brain damage. So he was already going to be mentally handicapped, no matter what happened.

And then if you were going to write a book on all the wrong things you could do to ruin a horse, well, that had already pretty much been done. It was a perfect storm for making the horse the way he was. But I’d hoped that through this everybody, be they horse people or people from the city, would get the message and the point that with this, whether you’re going to have horses or dogs or children, comes great responsibility, and not just to give them food and shelter. But to teach them right from wrong and to guide them and to show them the right thing from the very beginning, so that you’re sending them on the course to success through their whole life.

Thank goodness, people have gotten the big picture to this. And interestingly enough, another fellow who was interviewing me the other day, made a fairly astute point. He said, “You know what I thought?”

He said, “Having seen your foster mom on there, I was looking at that horse thinking, that could have just as easily been you, Buck.” And I thought, “You’re right on, bud.”

Speaking about your foster mom, the film shows that movie stars can come in all shapes and sizes. She’s such a charmer. I’m so glad they put her in.

She's the best. Still, as many times as I've seen it, I can't watch a screening without crying. I just can't. She's such a great person.

It's really professional when you go into a question and answer session after a screening where you've been bawling (laughs).

But I think it takes a real man to admit vulnerabilities.

I think so.

How long did it take you to get Robert Redford to where he could imitate some of the things that you do?

Of course, when you're shooting a film like that, you look at how short all the scenes are by the time it gets cut up into a feature film, you don't have to have long bursts of brilliance. You know what I mean (laughs)?

I doubled for him on some of the harder stuff, and they could shoot it in a way that looked like Redford. But Bob Redford is a real athlete. He's done some really athletic things in his life, so he's a handy guy. And his personality is such that he could really kind of connect with me when I'd be explaining something to him.

There are some actors who may be good in certain character roles. There are some actors who have way too much ego or are too macho and way too full of themselves to adapt to something different. It fit Redford to a "T" because he's not one of those guys. He's not what most folks would expect even though he's so famous, and he's like the big king in that business. But he's a good guy, and he's the kind of guy you'd enjoy spending time with him regardless of if he was famous.

I write computer documentation for a living. One of my biggest challenges is keeping my patience with people because there are still folks out there who aren't comfortable with computers. Is it tough for you when you're dealing with newcomers? I noticed that you try to be good humored around these people.

It is very much the same, you know. You can't approach them the same way because you've said the same thing 100,000 times. You can't approach them like it's their fault. They're there, and they've stepped up and admitted that they need to know more. They've shown the courage to even get out there in front of everybody with their horse. So you have to respect that. Nobody's trying to look inept. They'd all like to look as good as they could.

You always have to remind yourself of that. You have to be open enough with the ones who are trying to get some education. The ones you should be frustrated with, with anyone, would be the ones that are still at home.

Did you once play polo with Prince Charles?

Yeah. Not a serious polo game. When he used to come to West Palm Beach to play, I got to know him a little bit, as much as you're going to get to know a prince. You know how that goes.

You could have been an accounting student. Is that correct?

Yeah, it's funny I went to school for a while. I got good grades. I was a 4.0 student, and my counselor, the advice he gave me was that the best thing I could do when I left his office was dump my books in the garbage and don't look back. He said, "You're at the top of the business school. I find it really weird telling you that, but I know about you. Some folks have told me that we may be the very thing that's holding you back right now." He said, "You've already had all the serious accounting classes already, so you've got that background. You need to move on. You're not going to be an accountant."

So I did. I walked out of his office and dumped my books in the garbage. So in my last quarter, I got all Fs.