The trio of accomplished horses and riders profiled on NATURE’s Horse and Rider have one thing in common: they know how to communicate. Indeed, when it comes to “cutting” a cow from a thundering herd, chasing down a polo ball at breakneck speed, or developing the discipline necessary to perform the ballet of dressage, horse and rider need to know exactly what the other is thinking. Misunderstandings could literally be fatal.

Such clear communication, however, takes time for both horse and rider to learn. Luckily, a growing number of experienced “horse whisperers” — men and women who have developed a special knack for getting their point across to their mounts — are sharing their secrets with riders, through everything from books and videos to conferences and workshops.

One of these teachers is Mark Rashid, an Estes, Colorado-based cowboy who has written three books on horsemanship (he’s at work on a fourth), and holds dozens of clinics with riders every years. His Web site, Considering the Horse, has become a popular watering hole for riders seeking to develop stronger relationships with their mounts. It offers heaps of practical advice, honed by decades of experience working on cattle and dude ranches, investigating cases of abused horses, and teaching greenhorns and veteran trailriders alike.

NATURE recently caught up with Mark early one morning in Washington State, just before setting out to work with a waiting group of equine and human students.

NATURE: When did you first take to horseback?

Mark Rashid: I’ve been working with horses since I was about 6 years old. I wasn’t raised on a ranch, but there was one about 3 miles from where I lived in Wisconsin. I spent all my days there for 4 or 5 years.

How did you come by training?

It was by accident. In the 1980s, I was up in the Colorado mountains doing a lot of ranch work on cattle ranches, dude ranches. I was working with hundreds of horses, including problem horses that had a large variety of [problem behaviors such as bucking, not stopping, etc.]. I also worked with a lot of people, trying to teach them how to have a good ride. But I wasn’t very good at it, because I hadn’t learned to communicate. But I realized that working with people was a lot like working with horses: they need to understand what they are expected to do before they can have a good ride.

Later, I was a horse abuse investigator for the state of Colorado, and that gave me some experience communicating with people [who were having trouble caring for their horses]. Then, someone called me to come work with a problem horse. Next, their neighbor called. It just kind of grew from there. Soon, I was working with whole groups of people and horses. Now I hold clinics around the world.

What’s your philosophy?

Basically, I try to help folks get along better with their horses by finding some common ground so they can accomplish what they want to accomplish. I have two main messages — Don’t fight; and be clear. If you can do those two things, it opens the door for pretty much everything else.

The vast majority of horse training is designed to find the bad stuff horses are doing, so we can fix it. I try to find the good behavior, so we can build on it. That doesn’t mean we ignore the bad, but we don’t hit it head on. You try to work around it.

Mark Rashid teaches riders how to communicate with their horses.

Can you give an example?

Well, a lot of people will come to the clinics and say, “My horse doesn’t stop when I want it to.” So, I’ll ask the rider what constitutes a good stop? How many steps do they want the horse to take before it stops? Well, often they don’t know — they haven’t thought about it. They get an idea in their head as to what they want to do, but don’t give a lot of thought as to how they are going to get there.

So the first step is to break things down. Before the horse can know what it is supposed to do, the rider needs to know exactly what he or she wants. Then, you can start making some progress, such as working on how much pressure [the rider can put on the reins] to make the horse stop.

What do you mean by “don’t fight?”

Horses are usually happy to do whatever we want them to do — if they know what we want. But if you come in with the attitude that the horse is [intentionally disobeying], you set yourself up for a confrontational situation, and it all goes downhill from there. But if you say, “I’m not going to fight with you,” you open lots of doors.

Then, people often realize the problem is that they are applying cues that the horse doesn’t understand. It’s a basic misunderstanding from the get-go. It would be like going to Germany and speaking English to everyone and assuming they would understand. It isn’t going to work.

So you help people think about why they are having problems with their horses?

Yes. I really urge everyone to look at all kinds of possible explanations [for problem behavior]. Sometimes, it’s not really a training issue. You have to make sure the saddle fits properly, that the horse doesn’t have some kind of a chiropractic issue. Horses can be stiff or sore. We see a lot of teeth and feet problems. Basic horse care can solve a lot of problems.

What techniques do you use to get your ideas across?

One thing I do at the beginning of some clinics is that I split the people up into “horses” and “riders.” Then, the “riders” have to go back and teach their “horse” a task — such as walkng in a figure eight, then jumping a fence, and then sitting in a chair. But they can only use the words “good” and “no.” Yesterday, we did it with 10 people, and only one of the “horses” understood exactly what it was that their “rider” taught them. The vast majority of the time people can’t get it done. So they realize how important communication is.

Then, I have my students pick a task for me to teach a “horse.” And they come up with some weird things. Once, I had to [teach the "horse"] to write my name backwards in the sand with his foot. But I did it. You just have to keep up a steady stream of “goods” and “nos,” and not just communicate once every so often. You have to be clear about what you want.

Sausha Seus is a wolf trainer with Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife, an animal training service based in Heber City, Utah best known for its star ursine thespian: Bart the Bear. Sausha handled the wolves that played Lobo and Blanca in NATURE’s The Wolf That Changed America. She has been working with wolves for 17 years. Wild wolves can be dangerous, and the wolves Sausha works with are trained, so — as always when it comes to wild animals — don’t try this at home. Here, Sausha speaks about wolf training and what it was like working with wolves on The Wolf That Changed America.

Q: How did you become interested in wolves?

A: I became interested in wolves because my parents own Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife. WRMW trains and tames wild animals for the film industry. My parents, Doug and Lynne Seus, introduced me to the wild kingdom at the age of three. I was part of a wolf pack by the time I was five. My passion for animals – wolves, in particular – has been heightened by being able to work with them on a daily basis.

What was it like the first time you came face to face with a wolf?

The first time I came face to face with a wolf I was five. It felt like looking into another universe. The same is true today, 26 years later. The eyes of a wolf pierce your soul.

Introduce us to the wolves that played Lobo and his mate.

There were actually two wolves that played Lobo and two wolves that played Blanca. The main wolf that played Blanca was Cree. The double wolf for Blanca was Spirit. Both Cree and Spirit came from Seacrest Wolf Preserve, a well-respected educational facility. Cree is the peacemaker of the pack; he is serene and sweet. Spirit is the wolf in our pack that initiates play. Spirit is a happy go lucky wolf.

The main wolf that played Lobo was Coda. The double wolf for Lobo was Coda’s brother, Yukon. Coda and Yukon both came from Bear Country (an animal preserve in South Dakota). Coda is somewhat of a trickster wolf and will try to get away with things like pretending he isn’t listening. Yukon is an aloof wolf. He is very self-actuated.

Off set, the wolves exercise, eat, and play. They get to run in the Rockies by pristine mountain lakes and rivers. They get to go swimming in the backyard pond and dive for cookies.

When dealing with wolves, how do you gain their trust?

The wolves have been part of the family since they were tiny puppies. They have never been treated unfairly or unjustly. Frankly, they are loved as members of our family.

How do you communicate with wolves? What training methods do you use?

Communication with wolves is verbal and non verbal. Wolves are masters of body language and respond to it immediately. We use the positive reward method of training. The wolves are never forced to do anything. Wolves love to learn and revel in praise, reward and affection. Ear scratches or belly scratches are the best! Wolves souls are wild and free. You can only ask, you can never tell a wolf to do anything; they do it because they want to.

What was a typical day of shooting The Wolf That Changed America like?

The typical day of shooting began at 4:00 a.m. The trainers would arrive at Wasatch Rocky Mountain Wildlife and load the wolves in their cozy trailer. It was always before dawn and sometimes the wolves would look at us like, “Are you serious? We’re getting up this early again?” By call time (5:30 a.m.), the wolves were excited and ready to work.

Usually, we would shoot from 5:30 to 12:00 noon. We would let the wolves rest in the middle of the day and begin shooting around 4 p.m. until the sun went down. The days were long but the people involved made up for the lack of sleep!

How did the wolves react to the camera and crew?

The most positive aspect of this shoot was the fact that it was so small! We had a cameraman, a director, a production assistant, and the wolf trainers. A couple of days we had a soundman. This made up a crew of six or seven which worked so wonderfully for the wolves. The wolves were able to know everyone and were very comfortable performing.

Describe some difficult or frustrating moments you had on the shoot with the wolves.

The most difficult time on the shoot was a night shoot. The temperature dropped below 0 degrees Fahrenheit and most of us were not prepared for the weather to turn that quickly!

Have you ever been frightened by one of your wolves?

No.

What are some of your favorite memories of handling wolves throughout your career?

Some of my favorite memories are, of course, wolf puppies. There is nothing more precious than a baby wolf howl. 

What can humans learn from wolves?

The sense of utter and complete devotion to family. An alpha male wolf will hunt and bring back food in this “belly basket” and regurgitate it for his mate and pups. The alpha male will starve himself in the process if necessary. The bond of a wolf is about loyalty, and it is unbreakable.

Nature vs. Nurture

During the 20th century, as humans have encroached more and more on animals’ territory, zoos have come to be more than just places to view wild animals. They have become breeding facilities, wild animal hospitals, and research centers. As you see in Animal Attractions: Amazing Tales from the San Diego Zoo, a lot goes on behind the scenes, away from the ordinary visitor. And much of this activity is focused on a single goal: trying to save species from extinction.

The thought behind this idea is that as humans have spread across the globe, the breeding, migratory, and behavior patterns of wild animals have been forever changed. Since we cannot put the world back the way it was, scientists reason, we must try to invent new ways to deal with the problem of endangered animals, some of whose ranks have dwindled to the double — or even single — digits.

The Species Survival Plan (SSP) is sponsored by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA). The plan’s aim is to help “ensure the survival of selected wildlife species” through cooperative captive-breeding and training programs. Zoos share animals with other zoos, which keeps gene pools diverse as well as increasing the chances of conception in the event that a particular male and female don’t seem to have the right “chemistry.”

The Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species at the San Diego Zoo is headquarters for the SSP of the giant panda. If the resident pandas are not on exhibit at the zoo, they are probably under the scrutinizing eye of researchers studying their behavior. This program, headed by scientist Dr. Don Lindburg, began in 1987 as a long-distance collaboration with Chinese scientists at the Woolong Giant Panda Conservation Centre in Sichuan Province, China. This rare species faces the double threat of habitat fragmentation and illegal hunting, even though the latter carries the steep penalty of execution in China. Today, an estimated 1,000 pandas survive in the remote bamboo forest areas of the Qionlai Mountains.

In September, 1996, Lindburg’s team became foster keepers for a 15-year-old rescued male named Shi Shi and a six-year-old captive-born female named Bai Yun, both on loan from Woolong. The pair was introduced in February, 1997, in the hopes that when Bai Yun was ready to mate, Shi Shi would accept her.

They noticed each other, and it was not friendly, but it was not aggressive either,” describes Lindburg of the pandas’ first meeting. “It is sort of what you would expect from a solitary animal.” Wild pandas are rarely found in pairs, unless a mother is nursing a youngster or a couple is about to copulate. To put the pandas “in the mood,” Lindburg rotated them in each other’s play spaces, recording their reactions to various aromas placed in the environment. He eventually put the pair together.

“What happened was that the female became very solicitous,” says Lindburg. “Unfortunately, the male basically ignored her, and then responded to all of her overtures in an unfriendly manner.” Shi Shi growled, chased Bai Yun away, and swatted at her.

This means the researchers will have to wait a whole year to run the process all over again: females receive males only once a year for two or three days, attracting them with a “panda perfume” in the form of scent markings on trees or the ground. Scientists believe that this method is one of the main reasons pandas face extinction: their habitats, once solid swaths of forest, have been split up by a sprawling human population. Now pandas cannot find each other during the crucial one to two days when the female is in season.

Meanwhile, Lindburg and his colleagues are studying Bai Yun and Shi Shi intensely, hoping that their behavior will give researchers a clue as to how to boost the falling population of pandas in the wild.

Update: On Auguest 21, 1999, Shi Shi gave birth to Hua Mei, the first giant panda born in the Western Hemisphere since 1990. On February 11, 2000, visitors to the San Diego Zoo were able to get a glimpse of the baby panda.

What would you do if you woke up in the middle of the night and found Earth’s largest land animals trampling your most treasured possessions? If you are a farmer in Northeast India, answering that question is no idle game — it is a matter of survival when a wild Asian elephant herd wanders out of its forest home in search of a meal, stomping through the rice fields that provide your food and livelihood. If you are lucky, the huge invaders are scared away by torches and noise. But the confrontation can turn deadly: Each year, wild elephants kill up to 300 people in India.

India’s elephants are locked in a fierce competition for food, water, and living space with the nation’s fast-growing human population. Over the course of the twentieth century, India’s population has almost doubled to more than 950 million people. In their search for living space, India’s settlers have cleared all but ten percent of the elephant’s traditional forest homelands.

Some Indians, however, have been taming elephants for more than 5,000 years. In The Elephant Men, NATURE follows a venerated elephant trainer named Dr. Krishnamurthy and several of his young trainees, or mahouts, in their travels 1,500 miles from their homes, as they aid a beleaguered village in the northeastern state of Bengal. To get the inside story on the making of The Elephant Men, NATURE Online spoke with filmmaker Harry Marshall.

Harry Marshall: In His Own Words

“In the opening scenes of the film, you see an elephant charging the camera, and then you see some people with torches. That wasn’t set up; all that really happened. If you look closely, you’ll see me run across the camera — with an elephant 20 yards behind me. I was chased by a wild elephant absolutely hell-bent on killing me!

“The villagers had told us not to run. They said, “When the elephants come, stand your ground and face them down, shine your lights at them, and they will stop.” So that’s what we did. And when the elephants came, we stood our ground, and the entire village ran away. We were left standing there. Finally, I said, “Run!” We took off rather too late.

“It was dark. I tripped and fell, and everything went black; then I was surrounded by a kind of golden light that was bathing me from everywhere. For the first few moments, I thought I had died. I was very irritated. But then I realized that I had fallen into an irrigation ditch, and the light was from my camera lamps, which run off direct current and so were still burning underwater. I spent half an hour hiding in the ditch with just my nose poking out of the water and one very angry elephant looking for me.

“At one point, I felt something grab my arm. I was afraid it was a trunk, but it was Alphonse Roy, the cameraman. Now Alphonse is only 5′2″, so he was really on his tiptoes in the water. And the first thing he said to me was, ‘Shall I take a [light] meter reading?’ I thought that was a funny thing to ask.

“Dr. Krishnamurthy is something of a legend in elephant circles. He’s been working as a wildlife vet for over 50 years. He was the inspiration for the whole film. He’d been asked to go to North India to solve the problem of rampaging elephants and capture them. It seemed like an extraordinary thing to ask a retired 70-year-old man to do, but it’s because there is a crisis — and he’s the only man who could sort it out.

“Elephants have been used [as beasts of burden] for centuries. The first recordings of men and elephants working together date back to 3,000 or 4,000 B.C.E. The traditional work of elephants was timber extraction and hauling. It was the ultimate beast of burden, but now there are [few] forests left [in India]. Elephants were once used in warfare, but no longer. Up until the middle of this century, an elephant was the ultimate status symbol. A maharaji might have a stable of 20 or 30 elephants to show off, but these days he’ll have a Rolex watch or a Maserati.

“Elephants have been losing their place in Indian culture, and the number of mahouts has dramatically declined. You have to be careful not to break that golden chain, because the whole tradition is passed down orally. There are no written instructions. The training of elephants does exist in Sanskrit texts that were written over 2,000 years ago, but the mahouts are all basically illiterate. Dr. K is a walking library of elephant knowledge.

“Obviously, seeing an elephant being trained — having its will beaten out of it — is not pleasant. But I’m not there to moralize, I’m there to make a film, and to document what has happened there for thousands of years.

“How long it takes to train an elephant varies. The younger the elephant is, the easier it is to train. The smaller elephants can be done in three weeks. It’s going to take months if the elephant is older and has killed three or four people, like this one very large tusker [we filmed]. He took so long to train that we ran out of time on our schedule and had to leave. Of course, with the bulk of the elephants, the training never stops, because they have an infinite capacity to learn.

“The bond that develops between an Indian and his elephant is as deep as any bond that exists. Dr. K’s relationship with the elephant he called ‘The Inspector General’ went on for 20 years. As he says in the film, after it had been in a fight with wild elephants, he used to stand on its tusks and remove broken bones from its head. The elephant has a grave that Dr. K visits as you would visit the grave of a brother or friend. When I asked how he felt, he broke down. His voice expressed the depth of his emotion.

“Dr. K became a wildlife vet as a freshman in university. Not many people enjoy living in the jungle, sleeping rough. He just took to it like a duck to water. They say that great elephant trainers, great mahouts, aren’t made, they’re born. Dr. K has an intuitive touch with elephants. And thanks to him the tradition will continue. He has many disciples who sit at his feet and hear his stories.

“The population of Indian elephants is rising. In India they can’t just be culled the way they are in Africa, where there are no religious considerations. The skills of people like Dr. K are going to be called upon even more in the years to come. Elephants are going to be used to control elephants. The domestic ones will be used to help control the wild ones. Elephants are peaceful herbivores when they’re left alone. But when a farmer empties a shotgun full of rusty nails into its trunk and the trunk goes septic, that elephant becomes a homicidal maniac.

“There are still elephants living peaceful lives, as they have for millennia. We just came back from South India. We are making a new film with Dr. K called ‘The Elephant Mountain,’ about Anaimalai, which means ‘elephant mountain.’ It’s a place where elephants live in peace. We’re going to observe a wild herd in a pristine setting for a whole year.”

Harry Marshall, the founder of Icon Films, was born and spent his childhood in South India. He received an MA from Oxford University. He was nominated for a Best Director Emmy for his film TIBET AND THE END OF TIME. Currently, he is at work on a series for PBS about the Brazilian Amazon.