Through a relentless series of experiential lessons, my four-legged companions transformed me into a more engaged, assertive, intuitive, adaptable, and courageous person, not so much by tutoring as by tuning me, helping me over time to hold a more balanced frequency. I was amazed to find that, like Pegasus, the mythical winged stallion who inspired poets, artists, and musicians, my horses could dispel the worst case of writer’s block through the simplest interactions. Like Zen masters, these exquisitely mindful creatures helped me navigate paradox with increasing facility. They even held the key to effectively dealing with emotion, and it didn’t involve suppression or expression. (For details, see Guiding Principle 1, in chapter 13 of the book.) I could act horselike in all kinds of perplexing human situations and completely change the outcome for the better. The barn took on a mystical patina as my equine friends taught me more in silence than anyone ever had in words.
It’s taken me a good fifteen years to translate horse wisdom into spoken and written language, and yes, I can even inject significant logic into the discussion. Much of the research allowing me to do this didn’t exist when I started this journey in 1993, so it seems I was born at the right time and place to take on such a project. Over the years, through much experimentation, I also developed ways of teaching these same skills to others. Yet while there is much I can now offer in conference rooms and lecture halls, my horses remain the true masters at transforming human behavior, illuminating ineffective habits and hidden strengths, and teaching awareness of, and eventually mastery of, that “other 90 percent” with remarkable ease and efficiency.
In this respect, it’s absolutely no accident that the most effective historical leaders — from Alexander the Great to Katherine the Great, George Washington, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan — were skillful riders, equestrians who had close relationships with spirited, arguably heroic horses. Regardless of policy and agenda, these people exhibited exceptional poise under pressure, clarity of intention, courage, and conviction. Their mounts were not mindless machines. They required — and continued to foster — an almost supernatural level of leadership presence capable of motivating others to face incredible odds and create innovative, highly ambitious empires. That Alexander the Great and George Washington each rode the same horses into battle year after year also demonstrates their ability to cultivate relationship as a source of power: to tap resources without taxing them, even in the most dangerous and desperate circumstances. Their horses returned the favor, saving their lives on more than one occasion.
Business, politics, education, and religion may seem like opposing forces at times, but they all share one significant, potentially fatal flaw: mistrust of the body. Civilization has thus interrupted the optimal flow of human evolution. Your body is the horse that your mind rides around on. It’s a sentient being, not a machine. (See Guiding Principle 2, chapter 14.) Starve that horse, beat it into submission, ignore its vast stores of nonverbal wisdom, and it will fail you when you need it most, throwing you during a crisis, perhaps wandering into traffic at the most inopportune moment. Reawakening corporeal intelligence — learning to form a partnership with instinct, intuition, and emotion — these skills are essential in harnessing the strength, creativity, spirit, compassion, and endurance needed to manifest lasting, meaningful change.
There’s a whole herd of horses in my cathedral, and they remain my greatest teachers. This is the course, the handbook they’ve dictated in so many subtle and powerful gestures.
The request for backup was unprecedented, especially so soon after the election — one Secret Service agent was injured, and the future president of the United States was taking care of him, waiting for assistance. Ronald Reagan hadn’t even taken the oath of office, and already he was a security risk.
“I have a big problem out here,” the detail supervisor reported during that subsequent, no doubt embarrassing, call to the White House. “I need someone who can ride a horse.”
Turns out that Reagan wanted to spend time at his California ranch after a grueling election campaign, but it was difficult for him to relax with members of the Presidential Protective Division acting like Keystone Cops on horseback. As John Barletta reveals in his insightful, occasionally hilarious book Riding with Reagan: From the White House to the Ranch, no one on the secret service staff even knew how to tie a horse that first week at Rancho del Cielo, so the president-elect ended up saddling all their mounts. Things only got worse when they started riding. At one point, Reagan took off at a gallop, jumping fences through the rugged Santa Ynez Mountains. Members of the security team were having trouble keeping up, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. Finally, one agent fell off his horse and broke his arm. The veteran of numerous cowboy movies dismounted and rushed to the man’s side until the rest of the crew arrived on the scene. No doubt Reagan also supervised the rescue mission as his novice rider-agents figured out how to get their wounded comrade back to ranch headquarters through a scenic yet confusing maze of trails where the deer and the antelope play alongside the scorpion, rattlesnake, and mountain lion.
“Our chief supervisor at the time rightly said that was not how things should work,” Barletta wrote with his characteristic gift for understatement. “The President was not supposed to be giving us aid and comfort. That was what we should be doing for him.” A quick, national search for the right agent to accompany the president on his rides produced the perfect combination — an army veteran, secret service agent, and experienced equestrian. Barletta spent the next decade accompanying Reagan on hundreds of rides spanning several continents.
Recreational Therapy
For Reagan, ranching was no publicity stunt. He built the fences in front of the rustic main house himself and was forever clearing his favorite riding trails of overgrown brush. When he’d head out to chop wood, he’d throw the saws into his old, beat-up red Jeep, even though his wife, Nancy, preferred he take the newer, safer blue Jeep she and some friends had bought for his birthday. In fact, the First Lady continually plotted with the secret service to rein in her husband’s penchant for good, old-fashioned, mind-clearing, body-renewing hard work. Over time, through careful diplomacy, the security team convinced Reagan to refrain from jumping his horse and running the wood chipper. Then, of course, there was the question of firearms. One false alarm involved a simple attempt to control algae taking over the Rancho del Cielo pond. Reagan bought some goldfish to keep the water clear, which he inadvertently ended up feeding to a magnificent blue heron who surely thought he had stumbled upon a fish lover’s paradise buffet.
Frustrated, Reagan marched out of the house one morning, pistol in hand, and started shooting, hoping to scare the bird away. “When the gunshots echoed through the air, the whole place went crazy,” Barletta remembers. The author, who could see all the action from his post near the tack room, tried to calm everyone down with a brief, unintentionally inflammatory radio message: “It’s OK. Reagan shot.”
“Reagan shot?!” they screamed back. Barletta quickly explained what had happened, looking back at the president, who was already assessing the commotion he had caused.
“I suppose I should have told you I was going to do that, huh?” Reagan said. And that, Barletta revealed, was how the leader of the free world decided to turn over all his firearms to the Secret Service for safekeeping.
Despite these early mishaps, protecting the president on horseback was by far the biggest challenge Barletta’s team encountered. When Reagan saddled his gray stallion, the security team had several hours of serious work ahead of them. It didn’t help that the horse, El Alamein, was an Anglo-Arab, a half-Thoroughbred, half-Arabian combining the speed of the former breed with the intensity and endurance of the latter. He was so feisty, Barletta reports, that “the more you worked him, the more excited he got.”
The stallion, a gift from the president of Mexico, had been taught to emerge from his stall, rear, and take several steps on his back legs, a spectacle designed to awe and intimidate even the most experienced equestrian. In fact, El Alamein’s notoriously flamboyant nature was likely enhanced by trainers enamored of