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Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them. How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success, and most importantly, find joy.
Your Host is New York Times bestselling author Rupert Isaacson. Long time human rights activist, Rupert helped a group of Bushmen in the Kalahari fight for their ancestral lands. He's probably best known for his autism advocacy work following the publication of his bestselling book "The Horse Boy" and "The Long Ride Home" where he tells the story of finding healing for his autistic son. Subsequently he founded New Trails Learning Systems an approach for addressing neuro-psychiatric conditions through horses, movement and nature. The methods are now used around the world in therapeutic riding program, therapy offices and schools for special needs and neuro-typical children.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on www.RupertIsaacson.com
Rupert Isaacson: Thanks for joining us.
Welcome to Live Free, Ride Free.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson, New
York Times bestselling author of
The Horseboy and The Long Ride Home.
Before I jump in with today's guest, I
want to say a huge thank you to you, our
audience, for helping to make this happen.
I have a request.
If you like what we do here,
please give it a thumbs up,
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It really, really helps
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To find out about our certification
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please go to rupertisaacson.com.
So now let's jump in.
Welcome back.
I've got Mary Anne Simons, who has
been in and around the whole horse
thing for a very, well, even though
she's only 28, a very, very long time
because she began in her minus years.
I met her through our great mutual
friend Linda Tellington Jones, who is
a great hero of mine and probably of
most people listening and watching.
And she'd been saying to me for ages,
"Oh, you've got to go talk to Mary Anne.
You've got to go talk to Mary Anne."
And so finally we did.
We found ourselves in Florida,
and Mary Anne lives there in the
belly of the beast of the horse
industry near Wellington, Florida.
And, But her work over the pre- the
last few decades has been of great
value to those of us who interact
human to horse in any way at all.
She's worked, you know, with people as
diverse as the FEI and also studying wild
horses and mustangs, graduate degree in
consciousness studies, developing stress
management products for horses and humans.
She has campaigned tirelessly for better
outcomes for horses in the sport industry.
As I say, she's there in Wellington,
which is the sort of center
nowadays of the sport industry in
the world, at least in the winter.
She's an eco-tourism, tourism pioneer.
She basically stands, I would say, for
nature and the mind with a bit of an
emphasis on the horse, as do many of us.
So what a treat to have her on the
show to enlighten us and talk to us
about all the stuff we love to talk
about and love to learn more about.
So, and she also has a new book.
She has many, many books, but she has
a new book called A Horse by Nature,
which she's gonna talk about hopefully.
And okay, I've rambled.
So Mary Anne, thank you for coming on.
Who are you and what do you
do and why do you do it?
Maryann Simmonds: Oh, thanks Rupert.
Well, since we had a, a nice short
visit when you stopped by in Florida,
what, four, four and a half hours
or so we never stopped talking
about the touch points that we have.
And, you know, I think like a lot of
kids that grow up aware, and I see so
many of these young people nowadays
that are aware, and they just sort of
go through life waiting till they can
get grown up enough to do what they're
here to do, and I was one of those kids.
I was adopted, so I kept thinking,
"Well, maybe that's the problem,"
but I didn't think like my parents.
And I loved nature, and I loved horses,
and my, my whole therapy and my life was
outside playing by myself in nature, and
nothing made me wor- I never worried.
I was one of those kids that made oleander
tea, only to be told if I drank it, after
I drank it, that I'd be in the hospital.
But surprise, I did drink it,
and I wasn't in the hospital.
Not that I'm telling you
to go drink oleander tea.
That was a dumb thing, but- Why did
Rupert Isaacson: you drink
oleander tea out of interest?
Well, it
Maryann Simmonds: was pretty.
The flowers were pretty, and I was,
like, five or six, maybe seven.
Uh-huh.
And I thought, "I'm going to make
my special herbal recipe," you know?
And so I'm outside playing,
picking flowers, and putting them
in water, and drinking my herbal
teas, and realizing maybe I should
learn something about plants.
But at that stage, I,
they were just my friends.
They didn't have names.
I didn't know what they were.
I didn't have a family that taught me
much about biology or nature although
we did do a lot of outdoor stuff.
And I was fortunate I got a horse
when I was five, but I got to start,
you know, basically riding lessons
at four, and then sponsoring horses
and, and just it was an addiction.
That's, I mean, you're born with the
horse gene, and I'm sure people can
relate to that, that you, even if
you don't have a horse in your life,
there are people out there who feel
like they need to have horse energy.
So, I grew up, and luckily my
parents supported me, and I grew up
in the hunter/jumper world and, but
we did everything with the horses.
We would go off and play, you
know, football in the mud with our
horses, and go up and herd cows
in the hills, and then we'd go to
the horse show in Santa Barbara.
So it was, it was back when horses were
your friends, and you did everything
with them, and sport was one of them.
So I was very fortunate.
And- This was a
Rupert Isaacson: California
upbringing, correct?
Maryann Simmonds: In California.
And one of the things that I noticed
in the sport horse world, even back
then as an 11-year-old, is that
people couldn't hear what horses
were saying, and I would hear them.
And of course, as a child, you have
no idea how you're hearing something.
Where, where is that coming from?
And there was one particular time in Santa
Barbara- Where a trainer had been trying
to keep a horse's head down, and they
just kept trying different bits and put
draw reins on, and finally the horse is
still throwing its head, and the trainer
had the person take a crop and hit it
between the ears, and the horse fell
to its knees and rolled its eyes back.
And I'm like 11, so I'm kind of scared.
I go over and I'm crying, and I
said, "You know, why would you
hit a horse with a headache?"
And the look that the person,
the trainer gave me was shock.
I mean, he put the horse away, but
I realized then and there as an
11-year-old that he didn't know.
He couldn't tell.
And so my question was, and this was
my pursuit, how do I know what I know?
How do I prove that I know what I know?
And how do I teach others that same
channel of communication and connection?
And so it's been a lifelong pursuit, and
it doesn't end with horses because, as
you mentioned, it's nature and the mind.
We're humans by nature, and as conscious
beings, we have the capability to
share that energy at any level of
nature we want, and horses happen to
be one that enjoy sharing it with us.
Rupert Isaacson: A question.
So you said you were adopted, and you
said that you didn't always see eye
to eye with your folks, but your folks
clearly valued horses and v- you know,
supported your endeavors with horses.
Were they horsey?
Was this something that was
important to them as well?
A bit.
And what, what, what, what did you differ
in thinking from them on, and why do
you think you found a, a har- a place
of harmony with them over the horses?
Why did they support you?
Maryann Simmonds: Hmm.
Well, they loved me, obviously.
I was adopted.
My brother was adopted, and so when
we started going, "Horse, horse,"
every, you know, every birthday,
Christmas, "I want a horse.
I want a pony.
I want a horse," they thought I was
kidding, but when they realized it really
was serious they did let me take lessons.
And I say I was different.
I always knew they loved me
very much, but they did not come
from a horse background at all.
Rupert Isaacson: Hmm.
Maryann Simmonds: So they didn't
really understand where it came from.
I mean, to the extent my mother, part of
her life, she grew up on the XIT Ranch in
Texas, but that was just horrible memories
for her, living on a big cattle ranch
as a teenager in the Dust Bowl of Texas.
It was not something she wanted to talk
about, having to ride a horse to go
pick up the mail, and so horses were
not something that appealed to her.
But both my parents were animal
people in that, you know, I mean,
I could convince them we need dogs
and w- with cats we couldn't do, but
salamanders and myna birds and, you
know, I was constantly bringing things
home that needed rescuing, and, and
they were very tolerant of all that.
So I didn't grow up in a, you
know, an animal unfriendly.
It's just I had a limit
on what I could have.
So I was very fortunate to get a
horse early on, and I think because
they did love me, they realized that
was my, that was where my soul was.
Hmm.
That's where I needed to be, and it's,
I think, what maybe they're, maybe my
husband after 50 years might disagree
with you a little bit, but I feel like
that experience of being around horses
and being with horses my whole life-
helped me turn out to be as functional
as I am because many a psychologist
has looked at my background and
said, "You should not be functional.
You're still holding things on.
Let's do past life regression
and find out what it is."
And lo and behold- Why should
Rupert Isaacson: you not be functional?
What's, what's going on?
Maryann Simmonds: Well, I think that's
because they, that's the paradigm
that if someone ⦠The, the attitude
I think in our modern-day society
is that we reflect our parents.
It's sort of the Freudian approach
versus Jungian approach, and
even as a small child, I mean,
my feeling was, "I got here.
Now let me get to work."
I didn't hold any judgment
against my parents.
They did the best job they could.
I had no interest in finding
my biological mother.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Maryann Simmonds: I figured
she has her own life.
She made her choices.
I truly felt like, "I got here.
I gotta hit the ground running."
So I was very eager to get out of
school and start developing the tools
that were already innately in me.
And I wanna say my determination because
I I look back and I think, I wasn't
one of those smiley kids all the time.
I was like, "Hmm, that, I don't agree
with you," but I learned to not disagree
with parents and adults, so I was one of
those, you know, overachievers that got
straight As and just like, "Let me get
out of here," and found that I was bucking
the scientific paradigm in undergraduate
school, showing how our scientific
method for observations is affecting
the system, therefore it's inaccurate.
And that was part of my undergraduate
thesis at Wyoming, is that when we
look at the system, we affect it.
But when we look with the system and are
a passive participant, we can observe
and we get a more accurate observation.
So I did a whole studies around that-
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you did stuff with horses not so much
with your family, but presumably then
with some sort of adopted or chosen family
at the barn or barns that you were at.
You said you, you know, played
football with them in the mud
and then went to the horse show.
So you got this aspect of just sort of
joy with horses, but also some experience
in showing horses, presumably jumping.
Then you go through school, you go off
to college, and what do you study at
college, and do you, do you manage to
keep horses going in your life while
you're over there in undergrad land?
Because that's not always so easy.
Maryann Simmonds: Absolutely.
I started at the University of California,
Irvine- Mm-hmm ⦠and, which is where
I met my husband and realized that they
were, they were quite academic, which
was fine, but on my first ecology field
trip out into the desert, I was rather
shocked when they, the professor killed
all the rattlesnakes, and here we are
supposed to study rattlesnakes and mice.
I mean, it's in a desert
ecology class, right?
I'm a freshman.
And so I asked and said, "You know,
why did you kill all the rattlesnakes?"
And they said, "Well, it's a safety
reason for," you know, and we
were sleeping in a cabin anyway,
so I didn't see the, the need.
Anyway, I got very upset about
that, and I said, "I'd rather
sleep out with rattlesnakes
than with rattlesnake killers."
So that- That made you
Rupert Isaacson: popular.
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah, not popular.
I had to sign a waiver Luckily I was
18, just turned 18, so it was legal.
And the professor was-- told me,
you know, what I'm gonna find.
And it wa- he was accurate.
At about 5:45 in the morning, I could
feel the rattlesnakes under my down
sleeping bag, you know, the thick.
But they're reptiles, they're cold.
They can't move in the morning.
So I move slow, they move slow,
and it was, I guess you'd say,
the first cognitive communication
exchange I had with rattlesnakes.
And that one really stuck with me
because I was so apologetic 'cause when
I went up on the top of the mountain
to meditate I almost stepped on one.
And just like a wheel, it just sort of
jumped up and rolled over and sat on
a rock and I thought, "Wow, I almost
stepped on you, and you did nothing."
And I was just so heartfelt, I
guess, and the snake with his
little black tongue, his little
black eyes is just looking at me.
It can't strike.
It's too cold.
And we just talked, and I was
crying and sad and wondering why
people wanna kill everything.
I still had this very naive,
I guess, childhood feeling
and I thought, "You know what?
I'm det- I like my feeling.
I like being able to feel safe
walking out in nature and not afraid."
So I really never adopted
the whole fear thing.
But I realized I did not belong
in the California system because
they did not like my thinking.
It wasn't going along with their thinking
where it's fine to test research animals
and it's fine all in the name of humans.
And I thought, "I need
to go study wild horses."
So off to Wyoming I went And luckily,
my advisory professor at the time, Dr.
Dennison, he agreed that wild
horses are wildlife, so if you wanna
study wild horses, that's fine.
So I did a double degree.
I did it in range management, which
is the School of Agriculture, and then
wildlife biology, wildlife management
in the School of Sci- of Science.
And so that also puzzled me.
You, you can get a whole degree
in wildlife management and
never know what an animal eats?
I, I just didn't understand, so I took
range so I knew all the plants, so
I knew what the horses were eating.
And the range attitude were all
ranchers and cattlemen, so they
were very much against horses.
So I got both sides, and I was the only
female, only girl in both degrees, so
it was, But it never occurred to me that
I was, it would be difficult, I guess.
It's the same thing.
I just, I didn't have that belief system.
I just went along my merrily way
getting my degrees, but living out
in the field and studying wildlife
and, and studying wild horses.
It was great.
How,
Rupert Isaacson: how is it that one
can get a wildlife management degree
and not know what the wildlife eats?
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah,
well- Is that really true?
And University of Wyoming at the time,
you could take a botany class, and you
might know that, you know, a hor- a
horse is an herbivore, and you might
know that deer and elk eat certain
shrubs, but you don't necessarily
have to learn how to identify them.
Mm-hmm.
And in range management, because
you're looking at carrying capacity
and how much forage is produced- Mm-hmm
and who competition with, you
actually have to know, is that western
wheatgrass or is it crested wheatgrass?
And if you don't know the difference , and
I did not when I started, but all the
ranchers I was in school with, they all
could look at a little tiny piece of straw
and go, "Oh, that's crested wheatgrass."
I'm like, "How do you know that?
How do you know that?"
"Well, it's got a little fluffy
thing on the glute," you know.
So I learned to go through a
lot of scat and manure and look
at what animals were eating.
And I think peop- I was, did a lot
of diet overlap studies with horses,
and at least in my studies, there was
more overlap in some of the habitats
with elk than there were with cattle.
So it was a bit of a false
statistical analysis to say horses
have competition with cattle.
They do in certain habitats, but
in a lot of them they don't eatâ¦
Like, horses eat western wheatgrass,
cattle eat crested wheatgrass.
Horses'll eat certain
species cattle won't.
Cattle will eat certain
things horses- It's
Rupert Isaacson: interesting that
they, that that wasn't a given.
I mean, when I was growing up in
the UK one would always put cattle.
It's, it's, it's sort of a d- a dying
thing now, but we didn't keep cattle, but
we would always have our neighbors who
had cattle put their cattle on in spring
For about three months because they would
eat all the stuff the horses wouldn't eat,
and this was just kinda a known thing.
It, it, it's, so, so it's interesting
that even someone like Wyoming at a
university and sort of a, where ranching
certainly was, you know, the thing,
that that wouldn't necessarily be known.
Or maybe the ranchers knew it but
the biologists didn't, or, or- Well,
Maryann Simmonds: I think the
dis- ⦠where was the disconnect?
I think the disconnect was
in Wyoming at the time.
Most people going into
wildlife management, wildlife
conservation management, they
were there as game wardens.
You know, they, how many elk you
can shoot, so it really didn't
matter too much what it ate.
They weren't studying its natural
behavioral ecology of an animal, where
I was in more behavioral ecology,
understanding how the habitats
affect the behavior of animals.
And then if you're in range
management, you didn't even want
horses out there, so they weren't,
you didn't even care about them.
You, you probably cared more about rabbits
and locusts than, than horses at the time.
They- And,
Rupert Isaacson: and why would you
not have wanted horses out there
if you're in range management?
Maryann Simmonds: Well, there
was a, again, a paradigm attitude
that horses were not native.
They were feral.
They were, somebody turned them out,
and they are better at surviving than
a lot of the livestock, so they wanted
them off the land so that the- Mm-hmm
⦠public lands belonged to private
landowners as opposed to the public.
And with the paleontological data and
other data there was certainly sufficient
evidence to show that genetically the
horses that are out there, I mean, yes,
you could say a lot of them were ranch
horses and they did come from the Spanish,
but there was also genetic variability
that showed that, for instance, there was
a lot of Iberian blood in, in a number
of them, like the Kigers and things.
And so, and when you look at the Spanish
and when they came over and there's a
lot of disconnect in ship records showing
that horses, you know, were here with
Native Americans and spotted horses 14
years after supposedly Columbus landed.
It's like, how did that
even happen, you know?
And so you start putting things
together and, and a lot of the data
on the horse bones of Equus caballus,
Equus tandyrgi would disappear if they
started getting second lab verification.
And so, it was a very interesting time.
I'm trying to prove
that the horse- Are you,
Rupert Isaacson: are you,
are you suggestingâ¦
I, I know that this is current these
days, particularly from the American
side, it seems to be important to
people to suggest that horses were
there before the conquistadors.
I- is, are you taking that position?
Maryann Simmonds: I think that there
were certain horses there before
the conquistadors, and that's based
on multiple points of evidence,
including native, interviewing native
tribes, that their stories go back to
pre-conquistadors, and their stories of
the horse and the fact that, you know,
you go down to the Chiricahuas in Arizona
and their language the Chiricahua Apaches
is more similar to Chinese than it is-
Rupert Isaacson: Well, no doubt.
I mean, one could say this is
just a sort of nerd out here.
I mean, one could say that the Athabaskan
languages of the Native American peoples
are extremely close to the Siberian,
and that would make complete sense,
you know, with the land bridge, and
it would make sense that we know that
there's a fossil record of horses
in North America for sure, but there
does seem to have been a gap- Yep, yep
Which we don't know why, but did they
get ⦠Why did they go across to Eurasia?
We don't know.
I myself, I have to say I'm on team
skeptical about they were there
before the conquistadors because I see
all sorts of political and cultural
and aspirational reasons why that
might be important for somebody.
But it ⦠So to me, I'm afraid it
does seem like mythology, but I know
that me just saying that means I'll get
jumped all over now on YouTube by like a
thousand people saying, "Rupert, you're
full of because, you know," da, da, da.
But the f- the very fact that people get
so emotional about it strikes me as odd.
But then again, you see, I, I don't
take a side one way or the other
really because I'm not fully European.
My family's colonial African and
so it doesn't really matter to me
whether the conquistadors, you know,
whether they were there before or not.
But
I, having studied the his-
I was a medieval historian.
It, it, I read an awful lot of the
accounts of the early Spanish over
there and I think if they had been
horses there, they'd have said
so because they're horse people.
But anyway, it's, it- whe- whether or not
it's true, it, it doesn't matter anyway.
Maryann Simmonds: I don't think
it's, it's not a, it's not a
relevant thing at this point.
Yeah.
But I did fi- I, I like data, okay?
So I just collect data.
Mm-hmm.
And I did find it interesting that a
paleontologist that I went to school with
in Wyoming kept finding bones that were
dated post-Pleistocene, pre-Columbian,
and they kept getting it verified,
and then those bones would disappear.
I found that really interesting.
I also found- Sure.
No,
Rupert Isaacson: a- absolutely, and
there does seem to be this sort of, The
Maryann Simmonds: Chinese road- Mm-hmm
⦠going through Wyoming and Colorado
with all the artifacts and things.
I mean, it's just, you know,
you pull data together.
You can't say, but genetics
don't typically lie.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Maryann Simmonds: Although I
won't say they won't, because
we've come a long way in genetics.
But to that point that you're making,
it's irrelevant because from a wildlife
standpoint, Roosevelt elk, they're
introduced into the state of Washington,
but they're considered wildlife.
Why?
Because you can shoot them.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I think
this is, this is why it's relevant.
I, I guess that's perhaps why I'm
harping on it, is because I think from
the wildlife management point of view,
of course, the people who are trying
to either restore or conserve the
As close to the pre-Columbian rangeland
as is, as is possible to do now will
feel very strongly anti-mustang.
I myself am surprised by that because
although I am skeptical that they were
⦠the horses were there pre-Columbus, my
skepticism only matters in that I can
understand why the conservationists
take that attitude, and at the same
time, because this is a 600, almost
700-year-old history at this point of
Europeans in North America with our
livestock having gone over there that
long ago, is it not now a moot point?
You know, the same thing as, for
example, I lived in Texas for a long
time, and people were all anti-feral
hog there, you know, which were also
introduced by the conquistadors.
And it's like, yeah, but guys,
they've been there for 500, 600 years.
I mean, at what point are you going
to say that something is of the land?
Because clearly this is a healthy ecology,
and I think that ⦠I, I think that's
the point I'm trying to drive at here.
When one looks at rangelands that have
mustangs on them in the USA, I wouldn't
say that one sees unhealthy ecology.
Would you?
Maryann Simmonds: No.
In fact, the horse is a great herbivore.
It's like the bison was, too.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
I
Maryann Simmonds: think, you know,
the reason the horse evolved in North
America, nobody argues that one.
Yeah.
It's just where did they
go when they died out?
Well, if you get a population that's
under 100,000 in a continent like
North America, and it moves into small
places, small niched environments,
the likelihood of discovering
or finding those is almost zero.
You know?
We just- Mm.
So, you know, as they've dug up some of
the trails and the Chinese artifacts going
across Canada and down through- Mm ⦠I
mean, th- even those things are like,
where did these gold pieces come from?
There must have been some
sort of a Chinese trail.
When you look at the cartology of
China and the fact that in, you
know, some of their dialogues they
were exchanging beadwork and horses,
you know, pre-Columbian in the
Northwest and Equus Tundra is very- Mm
similar to Equus Ca- Caballos
that it makes it seem like there
probably were horses in the north
then and the pathways were open.
You look at the Lakota beadwork and it's
like a Japanese or Asian empress beadwork.
Very similar.
And so, you know, rather than
like you, I'm not ⦠I mean,
it's irrelevant at this point.
If it's a good herbivore and
it manages the habitat, then
whether it's- Well, right.
This is the point ⦠like not.
Yeah ⦠when it
Rupert Isaacson: comes down to should
we shoot mustangs- Yeah ⦠I then
go to team no, we shouldn't, because,
well, A, I like horses, but, B, if
they were there 40,000 years ago- And
left, then they still are indigenous.
And if they've been back for 600
years and clearly the rangelands that
they're on, unless there's massive
overpopulation- Mm-hmm ⦠are doing fine,
then why do we need to persecute them?
Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds: Well, that
is a paradigm and an attitude.
And, and you get back to your point,
you know, a- and I've read probably
not nearly as much as you have on
history and medieval, but it's,
it's sent me on a path of discovery.
And what I realize is when we write
you can write anything you want- Mm-hmm
⦠and it doesn't all have to be truth.
And when you look at ship logs and reading
through that, I realize that sometimes
they didn't tell the truth even in the
ship's logs because they didn't want, you
know, they wouldn't continue their funding
if they weren't in the right place, and so
there's discrepancies all through history.
Absolutely.
And we take it at its face value,
like this is written therefore
it's word, but in a lot of cases I
think it was written for a specific
purpose and it may not be accurate.
So- Mm.
A- and we accept, when you see
something, I mean, in today's
world, when you write it enough and
you say it enough, we believe it.
Does that mean it's the truth?
Maybe on one level, in one dimension,
but is it the truth of the timeframe in
the framework that we're discussing it?
Maybe- Right.
Rupert Isaacson: And it, it, it becomes,
it becomes, you know, it, it matters,
I suppose, in inverted commas, when
people are making decisions about whether
they should persecute a species or not.
And then every argument that
one can muster to protect
that species becomes relevant.
Well,
Maryann Simmonds: and then
you just said, you know, we
clump them together in species.
We call humans a species,
horses a species.
Mm.
But, you know, my work looked at cultural
diversity and functional social behavior.
Mm-hmm.
And I guess you could apply the same
lens over humans and everything else.
I mean, I'm all for getting rid of
those in the societies that, you know,
let's move them out to the fringe if
they're not supporting a sustainable,
collaborative, forward-moving evolution.
That's how nature has been so successful,
and when we see these super competitive
models that dominate, yeah, they-
they're good for a while, but they all
die out because there's nothing left.
Mm-hmm.
And so if we're managing towards
sustainability and collaboration, then
identifying those individuals in those
cultures that have skillsets to be
sustainable, I would think would be what
we would try to manage toward, whether
it's wildlife or social societies.
Which is a tricky one.
We won't get into that.
It is
Rupert Isaacson: indeed.
But- But, you know, so much
of it comes down to, you know,
people's ideologies, doesn't it?
I mean, I remember I was a journalist
in the '90s when they f- did the first
wolf reintroductions into Yellowstone.
Oh, yeah.
And I went up there, you know, to report
on that, and interviewed, as like you, a
bunch of ranchers who were really, really
a- of course anti the wolf coming back.
And I asked them, you know, "Why?"
And they said, "Well, you
know, they'll kill everything."
And I said, "Well- Will they?
And like, "Well, they'll
kill some things."
I said, "Well, that,
that's probably true."
And I said, "You know, it's also
true that 100 years ago, or 150 years
ago, if you were trying to eke out a
living here and wolves killed some of
your livestock, that would probably
impact you pretty hard economically.
But we all know now that it- we're in a
different economic timeframe, and if they
do kill some of your livestock, it, it's
already been doc- you know, said that
they'll, you'll be amply compensated.
So w- what's the real problem?"
And every time, when I stripped
away the onion layers, the real
problem was, "We just don't wanna
be interfered with by government.
We just resent this interference.
And we see now the wolf as a, as
a symbol of you know, government
coming and interfering."
And I said, "Well, I c-
that I can understand."
But I also said, "But
you're also American, right?
You believe in free enterprise."
And they're like, "Well, yes, of course."
You know, and start waving
the stars and stripes around.
And I said, "Well, then what about
wolf T-shirts and wolf mugs, and you
know, if the wolf comes back, can you
not make some money off these wolves?
And then what if, you know, they
get a sustainable population?
Can't you hunt them?
Do you like hunting?"
"Well, yeah, we do like hunting."
I said, "Well, then if you did that,
what if you guided trophy hunters to
hunt a certain number of these wolves
once they've reached this, you knowâ¦
Isn't that kind of you get your
jollies, you get to kill them,
you get to sell T-shirts, and
the wolves get to be there, too?
And you also get to grumble about it,
'cause you love to grumble, you know?
And everyone happy, no?"
A- and of course the wolf is back, and
so that outcome has sort of happened.
But it's interesting how, I mean,
you must have discu- you know,
found this with, with the mustangs,
it, that it comes down so much to
ideology now more than it did before.
It did.
I
Maryann Simmonds: worked a lot with
the ranchers, and I have to say my
experience with Wyoming ranchers was
not what people's perceptions were.
Mm.
The ranchers, they don't wanna risk
their lives, their horses' lives.
They don't wanna waste energy.
They're, they're very sustainable
in their systems because they've
lived with the land for so long.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Maryann Simmonds: The good ranchers that
I worked with in around Green Mountain
and different places, they had a system,
and it was working very well for years,
and I think y- you hit the point.
They just didn't want interference.
So Wyoming was very slow to meet the
BLM's requirement of removing horses
because they already had, at that
time in the '70s, a, a rancher removal
system, and it was, it worked well.
They'd, they'd stick a mare, a
seasoned mare down in the corral
and wait for the bachelor boys, the
bachelor bands to come down, and those
are stallions that are running in a
bachelor group and don't have harems.
And they'd come down, and then, you know,
they'd be in the corral, and they'd be
ranch horses s- the next week, you know?
And the, the stallions that had mares and
harems had very functional groups, and
they were together for years and years.
And the migrations and where they
went, the ranchers knew when they'd
see them, when they wouldn't.
Mm.
And they left them alone
because the reproductive
rates were quite low, 1 to 4%.
Mm.
4%, 2%, depend on the year.
But they didn't have any ingression
and much, not much migration.
A little bit of migration, but because
we didn't have a lot of pressure from
bachelor stallions trying to take over
only a really tough, smart stallion
would even get in to get mares.
And so when you looked at natural die-off
and you looked at removal of most of the
stallions that wanted mares, which were
ranch horses, it was pretty managed.
So the BLM came in and just decided to
take a bunch and gate cut, and that's
when reproductive rates just skyrocketed.
They destroyed the social culture.
And yes, you know, people have this-
I don't wanna say mythology, but
beliefs of the, the family bands,
which in some groups were very strong
and in other groups were very loose.
The, the social society of horses while
it did not completely match with ecology,
in other words, as a behavioral ecologist,
we like to think that the, the land
dictates the behavior of the species, and
to a point, you know, getting food and
water, they're gonna migrate to food and
water, but the behaviors of the different
cultures of horses were quite different.
There was one herd that even another group
of horses ha- could not understand them.
They would come to the water hole,
and they would all just, you know,
up and down with their heads, and
even the youngsters, the foals, would
go up and down with their heads.
And I remember seeing another band s-
look at them, just stare at them like,
"What are they say- what are they doing?"
You know?
Like, "We don't understand you."
Whether they did it and developed
a behavior like this from flies or
because of thirst, requesting to, toâ¦
Who knows?
But the entire group, they taught it.
And since so much of social mammal
behavior is learned, horses learn
from us, they learn from other horses,
and that's where we can't say horses
are this way or horses are that way.
You have to really look at the context
of which you're making those statements.
You can say loosely what things
are, and you know, it'sâ¦
But when you look at other
researchers around the world- Dr.
Dan Rubenstein, who did the intro
on the wild horse part of my book,
he's from Princeton, and he has
studied equids all over the world,
zebras, Przewalski's horses.
And while we see similarities in terms
of bachelors and stallions with harems
and social facilitators of mares there's
unique cultures out there, and that
they have decided to make a different
decision and go a different direction.
You see cross-species cultural groups
where there was a bighorn sheep that
decided to stay with first a bachelor
group, and then he moved in when the
bachelors got mares, and he never
went back to being a bighorn sheep.
He stayed with his bachelor horse friends.
Well, they weren't bachelor anymore.
They were stallion friends that had mares,
and he was right up there with them,
protecting the herd, with some big horns.
So, you know, that to me is what
amazed me about being in the field
as a field biologist and spending so
much time alone with, you know, I have
to say, no cell phones, not even a
computer, so you're still taking notes.
Probably you remember those
days where you write notes in
a notebook before you, you can-
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, I, w- when
I- I was daubing on the cave walls
Maryann Simmonds: around about that time.
Yeah, about that time.
Yeah.
So there's something different when
you're making pictures and notes and, you
know, s- I did have a camera so I could
snap some, but mostly I realized it was
my field notes that were most helpful.
Because when I would try to bring a
camera into the picture, whether it was
with wild horses or then later in life
I was doing dolphins and behaviors, it,
there was a disconnect, and that's why
I so admire photographers, because they
have to just sit there and be a part of
the landscape for so long before they can
really capture what's going on, where I
would be there And I would be watching
and observing, and then I, I remember so
many times I'd go to get my camera and
that observation would, would disappear.
I wouldn't be able to get it, and
it's like, "Okay, I'm not gonna
even take- try to take a picture."
And I think of all the times,
the one picture I finally did
get was actually of a badger.
It was a young juvenile badger,
and he kept going up and through
the cattle guard with me.
He'd come up and look at me, and then
I'd go to get my camera, and then he'd
go back to the other side of the cattle
guard, and it was almost like a game.
And I'm like, "Okay, no one's gonna
believe that we're playing this
hide and seek game with a badger."
And finally, I got my camera, and
he sat up on the other side of the
cattle guard just like this, and I
got his picture, and it's like, there.
He was just the cutest thing,
and it was just curiosity.
And I noticed that wildlife behaved
very differently, again, going
back to my thesis, when you're
looking with them, not at them.
Mm-hmm.
I had pronghorn antelope
coming up behind me.
I'm studying with binocs, you know,
pronghorn antelope out there, and
feeling like, Rupert Sheldrake actually
wrote The Feeling of Being Looked At.
You know, he's written on that.
Mm.
And when you turn around and it's,
like, a young buck with his head
down sniffing my camera gear and
my backpack, and I'm like, "I don't
think you're supposed to be over here.
I think your mom's
gonna look for you are."
But that innocence of curiosity with no
fear is what brought wildlife around.
And so, you know, getting back to the-
Mm ⦠attitudes of what we read and
what's written you know, I'm careful
as a scientist, and I think this is a
progression that perhaps other people have
gone through too, is that you start out as
a scientist and you honor science and you
make things very, quote, objective, which
in reality they're not that objective.
And then you start to be more
subjective and put it into context.
And then as you start to merge with
nature, you start to become a naturalist.
And then you get deeper into
connecting with nature, and you start
to become a spiritualist, and nature
just draws you in because I think
it feeds our souls the deeper we go
and the more connections we have.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, right.
It, it, it is our souls.
We, we cannot s- you know I find
it very interesting when people
talk about, oh, the separation from
nature as if that were even possible.
You know, here we are
talking through Zoom, right?
So there's silicon involved, and
there's electricity involved, and
what are these but products of- Yeah
the universe, which is nature.
And we both are breathing in oxygen, you
know, currently, and so even if we were
sitting in the middle of some, you know,
highly artificial-looking environment.
Hell, I've even got an AI background here.
Yeah.
But it's all nature.
It's just-
processed by humans.
But that's what we've always done
as humans, ever since we first
started messing about with fire.
But it's, it's still nature.
And it, it's interesting to me that
it's again, ideology, that there's a
concept that one can, that it's even
possible to separate oneself from nature.
But of course, we know what people mean.
It, it, it's a, you know, b- people
d- be- taking a destructive attitude.
And speaking of destructive attitudes,
so why at the time that you were studying
out there on the rangelands, why was
the BLM, Bureau of Land Management,
by the way, for the British and other
non-American listeners and viewers,
who are the people who manage the, the
rangelands, the government agencies that
run the big rangelands out in Western
North America, well, in Western USA.
Why did they take this approach?
And then you also mentioned
something about cross-fencing and
gates, which disrupted the social-
Maryann Simmonds: Oh,
how they- Did I, did I
Rupert Isaacson: hear that correctly?
And, and then numbers
skyrocketed when actually numbers
before that had been stable.
So can you just clarify that?
So why was that decision made?
What was this change in policy?
And, and also, howâ¦
what were you studying?
Were you studying sort of quote unquote,
"in defense of the mustangs" being there?
Or at this stage were you
just purely objective?
Maryann Simmonds: Part of my undergraduate
work at the University of Wyoming was
doing a range comparative study in
the 1973 through '76, and it was on
'72, '73, '74, I guess is when it was.
It was looking at dietary overlap
of horses with cattle, sheep,
elk, pronghorn And actually,
I never thought much about it.
I res- turned in the, the research
until I was on the National Advisory
Board for the Wild Horses & Burros
for United States in the early '90s.
And I thought, y- you know, it, it
initi- which it was a National Academy
of Sciences grant that in- that was
substantiated through the University of
Wyoming competitive diets that horses
were competing with other livestock, which
initiated the removal of wild horses.
That's what it started with.
So they passed the Wild Horse and Burro
Protection Act, which was due to Wild
Horse Annie, because they were justâ¦
You know, not all ranchers
were good at the time.
I'm just- I gave you my window view of
m- the Wyoming ranchers I worked with.
But in Nevada and other places,
it was quite cruel, and they were
doing horrible things to them.
So that was the largest outcry to
Congress outside of the Vietnam War,
because children wrote into Congress,
"You can't do this to our horses."
So it stopped.
They had a National Protection Act.
But what happened with that is
that the, the land managersâ¦
And realize the Bureau of Land
Management was never a wildlife manager.
They were a land manager set
up for railroads and, you
know, managing livestock.
And so here they got thrown to
manage wild horses, and in their
mind they're like, "So now we gotta
manage a bunch of feral ranch horses?"
You know, that was not theirâ¦
It wasn't their fault.
It wasn't their niche.
And Fish and Wildlife didn't want
it 'cause you can't shoot it.
And so if you can't shoot it and
eat it, which I've been on record
testifying on that one when I was on
the National Advisory Board, making
the statement that if you can't shoot
it or eat it, it doesn't have a value.
And that's when we get to,
what is the human value?
So, they started removing horses.
And, and the ranchers got the finger
pointed at them, so some were ranchers.
But when you really dive into it,
there's a lot of oil and gas leases.
And, you know, it's- the whole Wild Horse
and Burro program has been more about
getting the public off public lands.
The, the group of people that hunt
and fish and typically, again, I've
known great hunters and good, you
know, people that are good about it.
And I have made the comment, if you're
going to, if you're going to remove
horses shooting horses on the range like
we would remove other wildlife species
may, in fact, in some cases be the most
humane way, as opposed to putting them
through helicopter chases and separating
them and then sending them in adoptions.
And, you know, the stress of separation
and travel and doing all that.
While we have some wonderful programs
out there, In some cases with, again,
identifying the cultural integrity
and what those horses' stress level
is, that should have been an option.
But we tend to go over here and over
there with fertility control, no
fertility, going back to gate cut.
There was no- What's gate
Rupert Isaacson: cut?
That was the word that you used
⦠Maryann Simmonds: Yeah, it was gate cut.
So in the early days, they just said,
"Well, there's too many horses."
So let's just say there are 2,000
horses on the Red Desert and they
wanna bring it down to 500 horses.
Now, recognize there was no
range management studies done.
There was no competition studies done.
They were just simply going off
the National Academy of Sciences
study, which as I started to say, I
thought they must have had more work.
And when I went in and looked at
the research, it was my study.
I was the field biologist doing
the comparative data under, you
know, my maiden name, Cannie.
So I called the University of Wyoming,
had them go back in the microfiche
files and say, "Did, was there more
studies in my range study that, at the
time, that showed dietary overlap?"
And Mike Smith was the head of range
at the time, and he went back and
said, "No, it's Mary Ann Cannie.
Your name's on here as a field student."
And I said, "Could you
please look at the summary?"
And he looked at the summary, and there
were like, I think there were 14 sites.
I can't remember now.
But there were four of the 14,
I think it was, that there was
direct overlap with cattle.
The rest had overlap with elk
or pronghorn or something else.
It, there really wasn't a huge overlap
with cattle So I asked him, I said,
"Do you think that that would lend
itself to be significant overlap?"
And I'll never forget what he said.
He said, "Even at the
University of Wyoming, we don't
statistically do it that way.
That is not significant."
So what happened is they basically made
the data say what they wanted it to
say to initiate the removals of horses.
And what they did in the early days is
they'd just run a bunch of horses in with
a helicopter or cowboys chasing them, and
then when they had the first 100 horses,
they'd just sh- close the gate and turn
the rest back, and then they'd bring more
in, close the gate, turn the rest back.
Well, there was no study of the behavior
of the groups, and my work on behavior
and studying horses showed that very
often you had a lead mare often in the
front, and she's taking the group forward.
The stallion oftentimes was
in the back herding together.
So what you did is you broke up
a bonded pair with their group.
So now you've got the lead mare trying to
kill herself to get out, and you've got
the stallion with not his favorite mare.
And so that led to not having stable
society in horses because the social
facilitator being the mare took over a lot
of responsibility in terms of when we're
moving and moving the foals and alertness.
And so now you had young males not
being raised by good mares or older
mares trying to breed two-year-olds.
And so we saw quite quickly within two
or three years that the reproductive,
the mares coming in in foal went from
an average of, like, the young mares
back in the '70s was, you know, five.
You might see a fourâ¦
You'd see a four-year-old.
Rarely would see a three or two-year-old.
But it went from your four and five and
six-year-olds to two-year-olds were now
in foal, which in a functional herd,
they'd never even get to a two-year-old.
She'd still be with her
mom, with her natal band.
So that, again, is in Wyoming.
Other areas had different behaviors, but
there was no effort to try to manage by
species, which we did in other wildlife.
You know, we would look at elk behavior.
We would look at how many, who, who we
wanna hunt, which ones you wanna take out.
You wanna take out big
ones or little ones?
How many points, you know?
And there was a lot more
wildlife study, where the horse
was not treated as wildlife.
It was treated as just an excessive
agricultural you know, as, I won't
use the term, but they used to call
sheep in Wyoming range maggots,
and I think that there was a lot of
attitude that that's what the horses
were, just something- Well, no, I
Rupert Isaacson: th- I think you're right.
I think, I think the, the mustang
thing seems to be divided into those
who love them and those who hate them,
and the ones who hate them seem to
hate them with a peculiar passion,
Maryann Simmonds: Well, I can
tell you why ⦠regarding
Rupert Isaacson: them as vermin,
you know, which is very, very
strange to me given- Well,
Maryann Simmonds: I
have an answer for that.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah
Maryann Simmonds: I actually
surveyed the ranchers in Nevada.
There was a lot of killing of
mustangs going on at the time, of
wild horses, and I thought this is
what sent me off into graduate school
to study consciousness, to be true.
I watched a person testify at a
local BLM meeting, and they hadâ¦
were testifying quite nicely,
and one of the BLM wild horse
reps threw his briefcase at
the guy, like threw it at him.
I'm just like, "Oh my God.
I've never seen that behavior before."
And I thought, "I am really not
prepared to handle people here.
I'm good with the wildlife."
And so I thought, "I need to go back to
graduate school and understand humans."
So part of what I was doing was
interviewing ranchers and saying,
"Why were you killing them?"
And I found it very interesting, and
to gain their understanding, and I'll
never forget, one of the ranchers near
Winnemucca, Nevada told me, he said
He said, "I'll tell you
why I hate those horses."
And I knew he had poison- he was, this is
many years ago, but it, he had poisoned
some horses, and so there was a big, you
know, 60 Minutes or whatever going on.
And he said, "I know those horses
were here with my grandfather.
I know my father's, some
of his horses got out.
I know those horses were
kind of put here by us."
And he said, "I can't pay my mortgage.
I'm struggling to keep my land."
And he said, "When that stallion
comes down," the one he had con-
and he says, "He looks at me in the
eye and he eats my alfalfa field."
And he said, "I'm jealous because
he has freedom and I don't."
That was
Rupert Isaacson: very honest
⦠Maryann Simmonds: really hit me.
Yeah.
That, that- Why do you think
Rupert Isaacson: he
was so candid with you?
Maryann Simmonds: Well, he knew that
I w- I'm not a judgemental person.
I was truly interested in understanding.
I worked with ranchers
on ranch management.
Mm.
I turned ranchers into ecotourism, and
what you were talking about- Mm-hmm
with, you know, the wolves.
This is back in '70s and '80s.
Mm.
I would put together, facilitate
workshops between Audubon and
ranchers, and I wouldn't let
anybody say who they were from.
You become friends, and
then we come up with ideas.
And so, you know, when I could convince
ranchers, you can get people from San
Francisco to come out to your ranch and
help you, and they'll pay you money.
One rancher in southeastern Oregon,
he sat there and, and he had also been
killing horses on the Kiger Plateau,
and his son one night came to my room.
We were staying at the ranch, and
it was over near the Kiger Plateau.
And he, the son came to
my room and knocked on it.
It was late, 10 o'clock at night,
and I had just gone through
driving home with this person
who tried to run over a rabbit.
So you can ima- me, it was just like-
Rupert Isaacson: I've seen
a couple of people like that
too ⦠"Can you stop this?
Maryann Simmonds: Yes.
Can you just stop this?
Just humor me."
"Quit trying to hit every
rabbit you go over."
You know, it was just like,
okay, and I have to stay.
But it was part of trying
to understand each other.
So-
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
No
⦠Maryann Simmonds: anyway, he came, knocked
on my door, and I went out there, and
he's, he's having a hard time talking.
And he said, "I gotta tell you something."
I said, "All right.
I'm listening."
'Cause I'd learned to have non-judgment.
I learned to just have this blank
face where you just go, "Okay.
I hear you.
You know, I hear you.
I don't agree with you, but I hear you."
And he said they had killed, he had
killed a, another group of horses
along the, the desert on the, below
the Kiger Plateau there, and he
said, "But here's why I killed them."
And I guess I could do a whole
storybook of why ranchers killed horses.
They're- You know, you
Rupert Isaacson: should ⦠oh- I think
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Maryann Simmonds: And he said, and he
was crying at the time because I think
he needed to let it out- Mm ⦠and he
didn't have anyone to really tell it to
because I had had a different opinion.
I'd been sort of, you know, telling
stories and letting him know.
And he said, "Those horses, their manes
and their tails, they were dragging.
The tail was dragging on the ground,
and they were skinny, and they were
walking just, like, in a single file."
And he said, "They looked
so pathetic and sad.
I just thought, they'll
be better off dead."
And I looked at him and I said, "So are
you telling me if you look like that,
I should kill you and shoot you too?"
And he looked at me, and he thought
about it, and he said, "So maybe
I wouldn't do the same thing now."
So he changed, and we turned that ranch
into ecotourism of getting people.
And so his father was the one
when I said, "You know those
little stone cottages there?
Let's get them cleaned up," because
everybody's up early, you know,
nursing cows, calves, and things.
And he was saying how hard it was
to get help, and he was following
what the USDA made them bring
cattle in and vaccinate them.
And I said, "Why don't you think
about going to organic beef?"
And he goes, "How do I do that?"
And so we had a long talk.
Actually, I think they did
National Geographic had him on
the cover of The Last Cowboy.
This is many years ago, back in the '80s.
But Ed and I talked, and I said,
"People will pay more for your beef.
You don't have to bring them in and
get them vaccinated all the time.
You can let them rotate from
your different pastures so they
don't need to be handled as much.
You don't need to give them all
the crap, and then you can harvest
them a little earlier and sell them
direct to organic beef," which he
did do a production, which saved him
a lot of time and a lot of money.
Then he when I- we talked about redoing
the little cabins, and he looked at me
and he goes, "Okay, you're telling meâ¦"
He couldn't believe it.
He's just like, "You're telling me
someone's gonna pay me money to come
out in the middle of nowhere, get up
at 4:30 in the morning, and go out and
work hard all day, and, and, you know,
nurse cows and do this and do that.
You're telling me that there's somebody
stupid enough that they wanna do that?"
And I said, "Ed, listen to me.
I'm gonna tell you the life of
the person who's going to do
Rupert Isaacson: that."
Maryann Simmonds: I said, "He gets up at
4:30 in the morning, he goes to the gym.
And at 6:00 o'clock he gets on a commute
called BART, and he has to go into
San Francisco and walk to his job.
And noisy and busy, and he's working hard.
And then if he's lucky, he'd onlyâ¦
He gets one or two trains at 6:00
o'clock at night, maybe gets home at
7:00, has dinner, gets to say good
night to his kids, goes to bed, and
starts all over the next morning."
And Ed looked at me and he goes,
"You mean people live like that?"
And I said, "Yeah.
And those people are gonna think
they died and went to heaven to come
out here and be able to get up in
the morning and smell fresh air and
go out and help be, be in nature."
And so we converted his ranch, so.
Rupert Isaacson: Here's
a qu- two questions.
One is the dude ranch concept had been
alive and well for, well, it started
in the, what, late 19th century.
So- Ranchers know, have known for a
long time that people from the city
will come out and pay money to e-
experience some form of ranch life.
Why, why was this so that's
question number one, why was
this news to these people?
Even though I'm not suggesting it
was quite like a dude ranch, but
nonetheless, they were familiar with
the idea that people would value that
way of life and want to come out and pay
to, to- Well- It, it was sort of anâ¦
But the se- the second question,
just quickly, is at what point did
you go from scientist to activist?
Because by this point, trying to
convince people to go organic or
Turn their land over to ecotourism,
and therefore also prot- help
protect ecology while doing that.
That's now moving into the activism range.
So first, why were the ranchers
surprised, and B, at what point and
why did you be- become activist?
Maryann Simmonds: Okay.
Well, one I think they were surprised
because they don't have a very
big, wide lens for their life.
It's very narrow.
You know, you just don't have
time to do much more than ranch.
And I don't think that they
thought a working ranch had
much to do with a dude ranch.
Those are- Mm ⦠people that, you
know, I mean, hunting parties and
people, they, they don't have time
to put the exper- unexperienced
people on a horse to do anything.
I mean, I go back to Wyoming, same thing.
I mean, I, I was, you know, still
in college at the time, and one
of my rancher friends was saying
I mean, we're talking, like, 1979.
He was saying, "God, I just don't know
how it's getting so expensive to move our
cattle from winter range to summer range."
And I was still in the horse world
at that point in time, and I said,
"Oh, I bet if you put an ad in one
of the horse magazines or the Denver
Post, you'd get lots of people that
would want to come up here for free.
And they're equestrians.
They ride.
They'll bring their own horses."
And again, he looked at me and
goes, "You gotta be kidding me."
And I said, "Just try it.
You got nothing to lose."
So they did.
They put an ad.
They had, like, 100 applicants of
people that wanted to bring their
horse up, and they startedâ¦
You know, years later, the movie
City Slickers was made, but this
was back reality of people that
had a horse that said, "Oh my God,
let's go herd cows in Wyoming.
This sounds like fun."
And they did.
And they realizedâ¦
And the funniest thing, this is the
funny part, is years later I was in
Wyoming, I want to say 10 or 12 years
later, and I looked up that rancher
to see if they were still doing it,
and he said, he said, "We don't even
take our cows to market anymore.
They know the way, so
we just stick people.
They, they can just take the horses.
The cows know where they're going."
And they, the cows are the guides back
and forth, and they made way more money.
They went from not, they went from
providing food and not paying to getting
paid from people that wanted to do it.
So- Yeah, sure.
Okay.
So second question, I don't
consider it an activist.
I consider it a solution finder.
I, I'm a whole systems thinker.
That's the best kind of activist.
Yeah.
So when I hear a problem, and I listen to
all sides, my brain thinks like nature.
Where's the point in the system
that if we made this change, it
might sustain the whole system?
And so ecotourism, to me, didn't
even have a name at the time.
Mm.
To me, it was just a way to monetize
a skill set that you're losing
money on to get you to make money
to do the right thing And again,
most of the ranchers I worked with,
they wanted to do the right thing.
In fact, another study I did on range
analysis was ⦠And again, getting
more into the consciousness work, we
used what's called the Daubenmire plot.
You know, you throw this little rectangle
thing out in the range, and you look at
the plants in it, and you look at the
condition, and you, you rate the range.
Well, I did it that way on a
transect, you know, the way science
does it, you know, very accurate.
And then I would interview the ranchers
about what they thought, what condition
they thought the range was in.
Do they think it was in good
condition, fair condition?
You know, what do they think
next year's gonna bring?
And I found that the ranchers were more
accurate than our scientific studies,
which is not unusual because they're
living with nature, so they know, you
know, when this happens and we get a
late frost like this, it looks like
it's gonna be, you know, a long, cold
winter, or when we get this in the
summer, we're not- we're gonna have
a drought this summer, so we're not
gonna use those pastures this summer.
We'll wait till fall before we use them.
They had an intuitive
feel for how to move.
They weren't just saying, "Well,
let's put as many cows out there
as we can, let them graze down."
Rupert Isaacson: Sure.
Maryann Simmonds: Certainly there
were some, but the good ranchers,
no, that's not how they did it.
They ⦠This is their livelihood.
This is their land, too.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Maryann Simmonds: So I was looking for
solutions, and ecotourism offered one.
Rupert Isaacson: Who were you
working for at that point?
So, you- you've been an academic.
You've gone on to grad school.
By the time you're getting into
the ecotourism thing how are
you making your daily bread?
Are you making it from the ecotourism?
Are you making it from something else?
Why, why are you getting involved in
this solution, making thi- ⦠The
time that you put into it, somehow
you also have to pay the rent.
So talk to us about that, yeah.
What are you doing at
Maryann Simmonds: that point?
That's an interesting ⦠I've
never been asked that question,
but it's an interesting question.
Well, first place- It's always
been my passion to help, and so I
was very fortunate that I married
an engineer at University of
California who supports my passion.
And so, he's allowed me to
continue doing what I wanna
do, whether I get paid or not.
And so, when I was in an
undergraduate work, I worked for
Utah International, which then
became BPT Mining and then GE Mining.
I went to work for Atlantic Richfield
in the early days in my undergraduate,
and again, looking for solutions.
When I started working with Atlantic
Richfield, they thought I was a guy
because there were no women- What is
Rupert Isaacson: Atlantic Richfield?
Maryann Simmonds: Atlantic
Richfield, ARCO, is a gasâ¦
is a big oil and gas company.
Okay?
So
Rupert Isaacson: you were working
for oil and gas companies-
Maryann Simmonds: I was ⦠and,
Rupert Isaacson: and advising them on
the management of their rangelands?
Of
Maryann Simmonds: everything, yes.
Okay.
Got it.
And then I went to work as a
reclamation specialist for a
global oil and gas company.
But I will tell you, I interviewed
82 some firms, and the ones that I
selected were about four, because
they already had environmental
quality departments in-house.
They didn't need laws
to tell them what to do.
They wanted to do the right thing.
Okay.
And I always felt like if you work with
good people who wanna do the right thing,
they can shine, and ARCO was one of them.
They didn't know, like I said, I
was a woman till they hired me.
I lived out in Gillette,
Wyoming by myself- So
Rupert Isaacson: Mary Anne doesn't
give it away at all, It was M.A-
I, I actually thought you
were a bloke until just now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds: It was M.A.
Okay.
They thought I was Mark Allen, because
that happened at the University of
Wyoming because my advisory professor
did not let me take the internship that
I wanted and shall I say, it would be
considered sexual harassment, and he
would've been fired in today's world.
But back then, being the only female, I
just sort of passed it on and I said, "You
better put my name in for the next job."
And he did, but he put M.A.
'cause he knew they wanted a guy
up in Gillette, but they got me,
and so that was a little shocking.
They hired me off my resume, not my name.
But as it turned, it worked out because I
came up with a proposal to reclaim after
the, the coal mine, they hadn't done
anything, that was gonna cost them $2
million for just a revegetation test plot.
And they had budgeted, I
don't know- So basically
Rupert Isaacson: you were the person
who would show them how to- How to do
it ⦠once you've mined, put it back.
Yes,
Maryann Simmonds: put it all back, right.
Put,
Rupert Isaacson: put the ecology back.
That's a satisfying job to have.
Maryann Simmonds: It, it was because with
ARCO they had, like, budgeted, I don't
know, 20,000 or 200,000, something minor.
They thought it was gonna be a little
tiny vegetation test plant, and I
come in with this huge $2 million,
you're gonna take the overburden here,
you're gonna put the plants here.
And they're likeâ¦
The vice president of coal had to fly
up to meet with me, and then he found
out I was a woman, and he's like,
"What do you think you're doing?"
And I said, "I'll tell you what I'm doing.
No one has written the Office of Surface
Mining regulations because they don't
know what will grow, and if you do it
this way, you will write the regulations
and you will get your permits."
And he said, "Let's do it."
And they did, and they did get
the permits for the Black Thunder
Mine in Gillette, Wyoming.
So I love looking back at all of the
places where I've interceded, from
Hanauma Bay in Hawaii, setting up a
rest rotation system on the bay just
like we do in range management, to
Black Thunder Mine, and working with
companies that went beyond what they had
to do and did it right the first time.
And that's where people
don't realize that they can.
That,
Rupert Isaacson: that is
very encouraging to hear.
You know, one tends to naturally think of
oil and gas, big business, e- extractâ¦
mineral extraction, et cetera, as always
being- with the devil unless a gun is to
their head, and then to whatever degree.
But of course, what is true is
that, yes a lot of mining activity,
they do put the ecology back.
It just isn't massively reported.
And it's wonderful that you got to be
one of those people helping that happen.
How long did you do that for?
And also, we've drifted a
little bit from horses in your
life, in your personal life.
W- did you then, as you were working
then, just get horses back in your life?
Did you begin to ride again?
Did you- I never did not have horses.
Maryann Simmonds: Sorry?
I always had horses.
I never not had horses.
Okay.
I never did not.
I was out on the ranch on my horse.
Got it.
And that was actually where I proved,
I wanna say proved my undergraduate
research back in the beginning, is when
I would go riding out on the transect on
my horse, I would see all this wildlife,
foxes and ground squirrels and badgers,
and then I'd go out walking to look at
the same thing, and they weren't there.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds: And then I'd
actually get on my horse again to go
out and look, but as long as I was
looking for it, I didn't have the
same sighting index, and I thought,
"I can't, I can't fudge the science.
I know it's there, but I'm
not seeing it at this time."
So I changed it all up and I
thought, "I'm gonna just pretend
I'm just going out for a ride today.
I'm not gonna look for anything.
But I'll stop at the
transects and record."
Well, when I was just pretending I'm
having fun and enjoying the day, I had
foxes and badgers and red-tailed hawks,
and everything's crossing my path.
And I realized what's
different, my brainwaves.
I was not looking at, I'm looking with.
I'm enjoying being part of nature.
So I took that to the next step and,
you know, did a study where I kind
of became a rock, and I just sat
there being a rock thinking, "I'm
a rock, I'm a rock, I'm a rock."
And a Richardson ground squirrel came up
around me and was foraging and, you know,
and it sat up on my knee and I'm still,
I'm just like, "I'm really into rock.
Like, I'm a granite rock.
I'm a granite rock on the range."
But when it got up on my head and
stood up and went I, this, I mean,
it was not even a 10th of a second.
It was just a split second.
I thought, you know, "Where's
a camera when you need it?"
And it went, "Ee," and went
running back into its hole.
And I thought the only thing that
was different was my thoughts.
Right.
And so I started training bi- other
wildlife biologist friends and hunters
how to be a part of nature and how to
work, and photographers that wouldâ¦
and hunter guides.
And so I had a lot of
guys to test it with.
Rupert Isaacson: You, you, you
said you started training them.
This is informally just friends
of yours, or- It startedâ¦
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah, they
were friends that- Or were
Rupert Isaacson: you hired by
some organization to do this?
Maryann Simmonds: No, no, no, no.
It was friends.
I was still working on the data.
Mm-hmm.
And so I just had them, I said, "Okay,
so can you just help me out here?"
Like, one was elk hunting, for instance.
I said, "Keep track of the elk you see
when you're out fishing in August."
And bow season hadn't even opened,
so it wasn't like they were
being hunted, and there wasâ¦
And bow season opens before,
you know, gun season opens.
And all my friends who, hunter
friends would tell me, "Gosh, you
know, when I was out fly fishing
on the Wise, I'd, I'd saw the elk.
But I went out bow
hunting and they're gone."
And I, I'm thinking, "Okay,
is it migration patterns?
Is it this?"
So we, we ruled out variables, and come
to find out when they were bow hunting
and thinking they were going fly fishing,
the elk were still there So they,
they out-thought them in their energy.
And it's the same energy I talk
about in the book, A Horse by Nature.
Shift your energy.
I have clients to this day that I've said,
"It's your energy the horse doesn't like.
If you can't manage your energy,
that horse isn't gonna go forward.
It will not go into the
jumper ring with you."
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
It
Maryann Simmonds: does not like your
energy, and yet I stick another person
on who I know their energy's soft and
supportive, and the horse goes right in.
Rupert Isaacson: It's
very interesting, this.
This is known in Africa when
you go on safari, if you go on
horseback, the animals relate to
your horse before they relate to you.
They will smell your horse
before they smell you.
They willâ¦
Y- your silhouette is very different.
And also, as you say, you are
involved in your horse, so you are
paying attention to your horse.
You're paying attention to the
ground even more because you don't
want your horse to fall over.
You're paying attention to what's out
there, because it might eat your horse.
And I, actually I read of, ofâ¦
That's a great quote from a North
American nature writer too, said,
"The further you got towards the
Canadian border, the more things
there are that will eat your horse."
I don't know if that's
what it looked like.
But it's very true in Africa.
And, and what, what is true is that
the wildlife tends to approach you.
Yeah.
And I think this is
true wherever one goes.
And when horse training, you know,
when I'm advising people for dressage
training particularly when it's the
upper movements piaffe, passage, the
changes, the pirouettes, the, the stuff
that, you know, is, is looked on as
being upper level for whatever reason.
I'll often say, "Pretend
you don't want it.
Pretend you're just going
to the bar to get a beer."
Say that in your head as you go
around, and what will probably happen
is the horse will probably offer-
Yeah ⦠because it's a natural
behavior of the horse, and you've
actually set them up in the balance.
W- kind of why wouldn't they?
But if you, they feel that this is
something that you are putting pressure
on yourself to put pressure on them for,
like many things in life that we put
pressure on for they become elusive.
And why would it be any different here?
How do I know this?
Because I put a lot of pressure on
and seen these things go away, and
the moment I pretended not toâ¦
You know.
And it's funny, your
thing about being a stone.
It saved m- that, that exact
thing saved my life one time.
I was in Botswana, and there was
this big noise in the camp, lots of
banging of pots, lots of shouting.
I was like, "Oh, there's a snake.
There's a snake in the camp."
That's what they do, they bang the pots.
They prob- it's probably in the kitchen.
I wondered what snake it was.
Probably a cobra, probably a mamba.
You know, I'm just walking
back towards the camp, curious.
As I'm walking back towards the camp,
this huge black mamba, about 10 feet long,
comes shooting up the trail towards me.
This is the only of the big poisonous
snakes in Africa that's actually
aggressive, and he's pissed off.
He's being, you knowâ¦
And I'm like, it's coming right at me.
And I'm like, "I'm a tree.
I'm a tree.
I'm a tree.
I'm a tree.
I'm a tree."
It went over my foot.
Maryann Simmonds: Wow.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
I managed not to cack my pants in
that particular moment- ⦠'cause
I so did not want to be a, you know,
a living warm-blooded organism.
No.
Maryann Simmonds: I am a really warm tree.
I have leaves.
I have branches.
A
Rupert Isaacson: lot of sap.
Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah.
Yeah.
That took a lot of self, self-containment.
Boy, that- But it's
Rupert Isaacson: interesting.
No, everything you're saying there
is absolutely true, and, and i- itâ¦
I'm always surprised with hunters
particularly b- because when they
don't know this, because good
hunters know this absolutely.
All good hunters from any culture know
that to be in any way successful, you
have to effectively become your prey.
You have to love them.
You have to have this, this really
intimate and respectful relationship.
But you actually have to have a sort
of empat- e- empathetic relationship,
which goes over into shape-shifting.
And having spent, been fortunate
enough to spend a lot of time with San
Bushmen hunter-gatherers in, in the
Kalahari, I've seen that shape-shifting
process happen in so many ways.
And of course, without
that, there is no survival.
But it's also, it's not just
survival, it's thriving.
It's quality of life because it's,
as you say, it's a spiritual process.
I'm always surprised when
people are surprised by that.
And- particularly within the horse
world because we have these really
intimate relationships with our horses.
We live with them.
They're family to us, even if we
aren't lucky enough to keep them
on our property and we have to keep
them at a boarding barn because
we live in a city or something.
We, we, we have so much
love for this animal.
It, it surprises me sometimes
that the empathetic crossover,
intra-species crossover thing doesn't
come more naturally despite, we
want to say, "Oh, yeah, okay, I
understand it's the Judeo-Christian,
you know, break with theâ¦"
Blah.
Yes, yes, yes, and we burned all the
wise women and called them witch.
Yes, yes, yes, and we went
through all that history.
Yes, yes.
However, when you've got a horse in your
life or a dog in your life or a cat in
your life or whatever that's really in
your life, that whole process just takes
care of itself because that's nature,
and yet we, we go into barns and we
see people struggling and separated and
suffering from separation from their
horses, and the horse is suffering.
Very similar to that story you
told a little while back of the
trainer who hit the horse between
the ears, and you said as a child
instinctively, "Why would you hit a
horse in the head that had a headache?"
And the guy didn't know, but also
wasn't curious enough to ask and then
was shocked and actually probably quite
shamed and probably asked himself- Yeah
"Actually, why didn't I?"
So let's talk about this process
of consciousness and intra-species
interaction and relationship.
Y- you- Way more fun ⦠you've
spent a lifetime even though you're
only 28 looking at how species
and land relate to each other.
Where do you think the separation comes
from, even when people actually are in
deep relationship with other species?
Maryann Simmonds: Well, I'd love to blame
Descartes, but I don't think we can.
I think it is a, it is a puzzling
curiosity in my head, and continues
to be, how other species can learn
collaboration and empathetic connection
and communication, and humans just
have such a hard time doing it.
Rupert Isaacson: And yet,
the, the original blueprint,
we are absolutely like that.
We're wired for it.
We're gatherers.
Absolutely wired for it.
We are absolutely like that.
Maryann Simmonds: We are, and
when you look at even why we have
horses in our lives, okay theâ¦
Again, you write it down aloft enough
times, people believe it, and that's
what's happened with horse training.
You've probably seen it.
If enough people say you must do
this to get the horse to be engaged,
let's go back to piaffe and passage.
You must do it this way,
and this is how you do it.
I don't know.
I'm not a dressage rider per se, but
I can get a horse that's a dressage
horse to do piaffe and passage, but
it's because it's a joyful movement.
Mm.
It's joyful energy.
It's yellow coming up through
the bottoms of your feet.
It's getting- Sure, it's
Rupert Isaacson: what
they do when they play.
Yeah.
It's what
Maryann Simmonds: they do when they
play, yes, so it should be fun.
And, you know, in teaching and
training horses, the best time to
get it is when they wanna come home
from a long trail ride and, you know,
their friends are ahead of them.
It's like, "Go ahead, get a friend."
And now you've got all this energy
underneath you, and it's like, "Now let's
do piaffe and passage all the way home."
So it's finding those moments
where they would naturally use
it and then putting it together.
And so w- I think there is a, a check
valve on our human emotions, and
I think part of it is for safety.
We don't wanna get hurt, so we don't
wanna open up too much to other
life because it is- Ah ⦠you can
get compassion- The fear of loss.
Yeah, the compassion fatigue.
When you love things and they're going
to die and they're gonna be destroyed,
and you can't do anything about it.
Mm.
That compassion fatigue.
I think that's part of it.
But I can say that just, you know,
looking and working within the sport horse
industry, we can't, we don't h- If we
keep sport horses, and I'm asking that as
a question because the public is judging
whether horses should be raced, whether
they should be doing these things I happen
to know horses that enjoy it and like it.
Does every horse enjoy it and like it?
No, just like every kid doesn't
like to go to school or be told-
Mm ⦠they have to do it a certain way.
But those that do, simple ways to enhance
the whole barn, and the trainers even
had trouble re- you know, doing this.
But the ones that have have gone,
"Why didn't I remember that?"
I take them back, you know, we do a
kind of a guided visualization, when you
were a little kid and you loved horses,
and you could hardly wait to get to the
barn to go in the stall and say hi to
the horses, and they were all over you.
What's changed, and why are you
not doing that every morning?
And when they have done
that, it doesn't take long.
Go in for 15 seconds, give a buddy
scratch, say, "How are you doing?
How was last night?"
Go to the next horse, do the same thing.
When you walk into your barn and
you visit every horse in their
stall, give them a nice scratch,
reconnect, say, "How was your night?"
Suddenly you have every horse sticking
their head out going, "Where's my friend?
Where's my friend?"
And it's because of that empathy.
They're emotionally intelligent creatures.
They're not intellectually intelligent.
And we too are emotionals, and this is
where I get so annoyed at, you know,
the models out there of prey, predator,
and they need to be told what to do,
and they need this, and they need that.
Certainly they need some guidance,
and you need to understand their
behavior and what they're saying.
But even within that context,
horses communicate differently
'cause of what they've learned.
But they need the emotional context,
and those that are the most, quote,
"aggressive," are typically the
ones that have no ideas how to
make friends with horses or humans.
Rupert Isaacson: No, absolutely.
And when you show
Maryann Simmonds: them that, they soften.
Rupert Isaacson: S- something that you,
I think, the the word that came up as you
were talking just there is bitterness.
This is something which is
interesting within the horse world.
It's a bitter world.
It's, it's it's
contentious, it's fractious.
You know, for example, you know, I said
I'm gonna get jumped all over for saying
I'm on team probably horses weren't in
the Americas before Columbus, you know,
e- outside of the 40,000 years ago thing.
You know, and I know there's
gonna be people who go like, "Ah,"
like, it's gonna spark anger.
Mm-hmm.
And it's like, why?
It doesn't matter what I think.
It doesn't matter.
Or you know, we know, we know.
Look at social media in the horse world.
And yet, as you say, what
motivated everybody to get
involved with horses was love.
Mm-hmm.
Sometimes a desire for healing,
may perhaps they were hurt.
Many of us came to horses that way,
but it, but the purity of our love
for horses was also its own thing.
And where did that go bitter, to
the point where we then have to
begin to attack our fellow humans?
One of the things which-
worries me sometimes when I'm clinicking
or teaching is I'll sometimes hear s-
you know, y- y- it's, it's a cliche
statement I hate people, but I love
horses, or I hate people, but I love dogs.
I'm like, "Well, then why are we here?"
Because this is people interacting
with horses, and that involves people.
And horses have always been domesticated
by tribes of people on the, on the
steppes whether they're the North
American steppes or the Eurasian steppes.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And these are groups of people
and horses interacting, and horses
want to interact with people.
Do you think that they want to
interact with a bitter person who's
bitter towards their fellow species?
Would we want to interact with a horse
that's bitter towards other horses?
That's problematic.
Do we think that a horse doesn't notice?
Do we think a horse doesn't
feel some distress if we go
around with this bitterness?
And yet even I have felt it in myself,
you know, in previous iterations
of myself, I have to admit that
I've been a little bit that person.
Why was I that person?
Because I heard other people being
that person, and I wanted a sense of
belonging, so I joined that negative
dysfunctional tribe for a while.
Didn't like it, so I didn't
want to stick around very long.
But I do empathize with why, you
know, people get there and the sense
of loss, but, you know, I might
lose this, the hor- you know, I
will outlive my horse or whatever.
But yet it is an weird paradox, isn't
it, Mary Ann, that this thing that
should be the biggest source of happiness
in our lives, we are the top 1.1%
of the population if we get to hang
out with ponies in our lives, and yet
here we are going around being bitter.
Maryann Simmonds: Well-
Rupert Isaacson: What's going on?
Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds: I, I think, again,
it, it gets down to trusting your
intuition and developing it, and
most people, one, either don't know
they have it or they don't trust it,
and they've been taught against it.
I guess I was one of those kids
that try as my parents might to
say it one way, I went, "Mm, no.
I'm right."
And so rather than going along
with the system, I just figured
everybody else was wrong and I'm
right because my world worked for me.
I was happy in my world.
And it took a long time to get
enough science and degrees behind
me that I could take the criticism,
giving lectures and papers.
I mean, I did citation work.
And I remember being accused by the
academic world saying, "Well, Ms.
Simons, that's really
anthropomorphic of you to say that."
And I said, "No, it's very arrogantly
zooanthropomorphic of us to think
we had emotions before animals."
And I'm like, "Where did that come from?"
And now I see the word zooanthropomorphic
in quotes, but I used it back in the
early '80s at a conference thinking
that it is our human arrogance that
says animals are beneath us- And
they're not, nothing's beneath us.
The plant that's, this, this is
going along with what you said.
If you hate, love dogs and
hate fleas, that doesn't work.
You have to love life, and that's how
we're gonna learn to work with it.
We're gonna continue having hurricanes
and weather events because we're so
separate, and the minute we start
realizing we can be water, we can
be air, we can be horses, we can be
snakes, we'll start to soften and open
up our awareness and our intuition.
And that's for a whole nother talk.
But going back to just horses, I think
that people have been wired to think
that horses are a certain way, and
they have to behave a certain way.
And I run into a lot of people that
have been through various forms
of, you know, natural horsemanship,
and doing this and doing that, and
I'm like, "Why are you doing that?
Your horse obviously says don't."
You know, you put the carrot stick and
it just like stomps its leg, "Stop that.
Don't do that to me."
Why are you doing something
that your horse says no to?
Listen to your horse.
And you know, when I do a clinic too,
and you're probably like this, I tell
people, "Take what works for you,
but don't do everything I tell you.
I'm trying to give you tools
to use with your own personal
Rupert Isaacson: horse."
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds: And when you get
back to loving, one of the gals who
I, years ago, again lecturing at UC
Davis in the vet school, and I asked,
"How many of you want to be vets?"
And it was kind of the time
when women were starting to
be more dominant than men.
And I'd say about half raised their
hands, and I said, "How many of youâ¦"
Or you know, they all
wanted to be vets, sorry.
And I said, "How many of you
love animals, love horses?"
And only about half raised their hands.
And I said, "Why aren't all of you
loving horses and want to be healers?
What's wrong here?"
And you could see them,
like, get very uncomfortable.
And after the lecture,
one gal came up to me.
She was so angry, and she was about ready
to burst into tears and angry, and she
yells at me and she said, "I tried twice.
This is my second, you know, two or
three times to get into vet school.
I finally get into vet school, and
you just tried to tear it down."
I said, "What do you mean?"
And she said, "We're not
supposed to love animals.
We can't get through these
classes if we love animals."
And I said yes you can, and
if you don't love animals, you
shouldn't be in this school.
You are the students paying to go here.
You tell them what you want, and
if you're doing something that
makes you feel wrong about the
animal, then you communicate that."
Obviously, I didn't have
tenure, so it wasn't an issue.
But it was like this feeling
that you can't love an animal and
also heal it and be in science.
How can you not love nature
if you're studying it?
How can you not love it?
Well, that's a question, and you
get into the animal-assisted therapy
field, and that has become a topic
of discussion of compassion fatigue.
If you're working with animals and
you love them, and here's a question
that was asked years ago at the
Institute of Animal-Assisted Therapy
that gets along with your thinking.
If you love animals, and you're working
in animal research, is it better to have
someone who loves those animals be taking
care of them, or better to have someone
who doesn't care taking care of them?
Because they're all gonna be euthanized
It's a tough one.
We all came up with we're all gonna
have compassion fatigue, and we're
gonna be the ones taking care of them
and euthanizing them in peace and love.
Because having someone who does not
care about an animal in animal research,
that's why, you know, not to get off
to- subject too much, but chicken farms
and anything we use the word slaughter
why are we still using that word?
That implies torture.
Why not euthanasia, happy euthanasia?
You know, why are we not shifting our
language to make death a more enjoyable
process or at least not a fearful process?
And we don't wanna get humanly
vulnerable in our emotions.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, yeah, we, we, weâ¦
In our culture, death
is de facto negative.
So we have trouble
envisaging it any other way.
Lots of things came up from
what you just said there.
The first one was y- you know, to
say that to the, to the vet getting
in there, is to say, "Well then,
frankly, why aren't you at law school?"
I mean- Yeah ⦠why, why are
you here doing this vocation
that is passion-driven?
Because, okay, you might make a living as
a vet, but you're not in it for the money.
So why bother if you don't love it,
and why not just do something else?
That's interesting.
The, the second thing that comes up
there for me is, The thing of euthanasia,
this is the dirty, not secret, it's
in plain view, but it's not something
any of us really want to address.
We are all gonna euthanize- Yeah
our animals.
Yeah.
If we are lucky, weâ¦
I'm just talk- talking from the human
experience, the horse owner experience
or the dog owner experience, lucky,
you don't have to make that decision.
You go out one day and hopefully
your horse is very old and very happy
and he's just been standing there
dreaming for a while, and you come
out one day and they're just lying
down and they're not there anymore.
That's happened to me with all the
horses that I've owned, I think maybe
three times or four times, and each
time I'm like, "This is a blessing."
Yeah.
But all the other times I've had
to make the decision, and sometimes
I've made the decision right, and
sometimes I made the decision wrong.
Betsy, the horse that you know, was
my son be- became verbal on, when she
became so old she couldn't digest her
food anymore, I couldn't bring myself- Oh
to, it was a human thing.
It wasn't a horse welfare
thing, it was a human thing.
I could not bring myself
to pull the trigger.
And so she ended up suffering, I
think a bit whereas I should have, in
retrospect, made that wolf decision
within the ecosystem earlier.
But I still made it.
Then I had another horse, I, I think
I made it right where I made it early.
He was one of the most crazy
swaybacked horses I've ever seen.
We got him as a, as a donation horse.
Nobody wanted him obviously.
Turned out to actually to have
a relatively strong back, but
we, we knew that, that a day
would come when it failed him.
And so he was also this
in hand school master.
He did all the airs above the ground.
Wow.
And he loved it, loved it, loved
it, and every time I tried to retire
him, he'd just be like at the gate
going, "What am I, chopped liver?
Come on, I wanna do stuff."
Wow.
And then one day he was
rolling and he couldn't get up.
Aw.
And I was like, "Oh, this is happening."
And he struggled and he struggled
and he struggled, and we sat
with him, we sat with him.
He eventually got up And
we're like, "Should we?
Shouldn't we?"
I'm like, "You know,
I'm gonna go traveling.
He's gonna go down.
No one will be here.
We're lucky we saw this this time."
Mm.
Des- he doesn't deserve that.
Let's end it now.
But was it the right decision?
And then a- another time, this
is way back, this is like 25,
30 years ago, probably more now
it was a woman- I used toâ¦
I was eventing, riding for
a woman outside of London.
And she had this horse who was one of
these archangel horses, you know, that
can- wins everything when it goes in, but
is also, like, the total family horse.
Yeah.
Went international in its competition.
But you could put, like, someone
who couldn't ride at all, and he'd
just take them around the farm,
like, total gentleman all the time.
Amazing horse, amazing horse, amazing.
Got a sudden weird kidney failure.
Oh.
And anyway, a decision was made
to put the horse down, and the vet
said, "There's nothing more I can do.
I can't get to the bottom of this.
I suggest you look for a faith healer."
And this was before my whole
journey into shamanism and- Mm
time with indigenous cultures
and so on had started.
So I was like, "Gosh, well, what's that?
And how would one even find that?"
So we asked around- The vet said that?
Sorry?
The vet said that.
The vet said, wow.
The vet.
Progressive vet.
Outside London said
that in the early '90s.
And so we tried.
We looked around, couldn't find anyone.
Anyway, I had to, I was the one who
had to bring the horse down to be
put down, and he was just a skeleton.
And- Oh ⦠and this hap- he
went from, like, top condition
to a skeleton really quick.
And you know how when horses are
really sick or animals are really
sick or people are really sick
and they wanna go, they wanna go.
He did not wanna go.
Oh.
He did not wanna go.
Well, we shot him.
Two weeks later, I'm in a, in a party,
drinks party in London, media types.
I'm talking to this woman,
she's a producer, TV.
I said, "Oh, what have you been doing?"
"Oh, we did this sto- this
series on animal faith healers."
Oh, no.
I'm like, "Where were you two weeks ago?"
Oh, yeah.
So I said, "Did you meet anyone
that you thought was the real deal?"
And she said, "Actually,
there was one person.
The rest we thought were actually
sort of attention seekers.
But there was this one guy, funny little
guy who lived in a trailer outside of
London, and vets refer people to him."
Oh.
"And he did one of the queen's horses
who had a lymphoma, a broodmare."
And then she went on
and da, da, da, da, da.
And I said, "Put me in
touch with this man."
So I followed him as a journalist for
two years and- Oh, my ⦠recorded
all these miraculous things he did.
And all he would do was go and spend a
bit of time with the horse and then come
out and give some instructions, and the
instructions were always really banal.
Like, "Change the water at 3:00 tomorrow.
Put the rug on at 5:00.
And then tomorrow, the day after that,
change the water at 2:00 and put the ro-
rug on at 4:" It was like that banal.
Wow.
And I was like, "Charles,"
his name was Charles.
I said, "Well, what's going on?"
And he said, "If I tell you,
you'll think I'm crazy."
So I said, "Well, it's pretty
crazy anyway, so go on."
So he said, "I used to have a f- a,
a friend who was a vet called Buster
Lloyd-Jones, who was in a wheelchair.
And he and I used to show dogs together
and sometimes we'd co-own a part of
a racehorse together, and he died.
18 years after his death, 18 years
after his death, I was in a stable
with a horse that had had an injury.
It was aâ¦
I was part of a syndicate that owned
this racehorse, and everyoneâ¦
We're th- talking about putting it down.
Everyone went out of the stable.
I'm standing there alone.
Buster Lloyd-Jones appears to me in
his wheelchair 18 years randomly-
Yeah ⦠after dying and says,
'You're gonna be my, my hands.'"
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: "What do you
think about that, Rupert?"
And I said, "Well, I think
that's completely nuts."
And he said, "Well, you did ask."
Yeah.
So but this is getting to
fields of consciousness, right?
So- Yeah.
And that's- The w- Yeah
⦠As you may know, if you've been following
my work, we are also horsey folk here.
And we have been training horses for
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This is something which is
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Maryann Simmonds: I was
gonna just pick up on that.
I mean, going back to when I was 11 and my
passion, I mean, yes, I was a scientist.
I- on the outside it looked like I was
a good scientist doing all this data,
but on the inside I was cheating in a
way because I could communicate with
nature and animals, and so I knew the
outcome before I designed the study.
So I was ⦠And I think a lot of
scientists might- You thought of
Rupert Isaacson: it
. Maryann Simmonds: Yeah.
It was designing the study with the
hypothesis I already knew the answer to
And so it just became so much easier,
and this actually played out many
times through my years of saying, "Oh,
well the plants are uptaking water."
And they're like, "How do you know that?"
And I'm like, "Well, you do."
And then the lab has to develop a
transpirometer to see if it is uptaking
water for oil shale, and yes it was.
And then having them all come back
and go, "How did you know that?"
So teaching how we know what
we know and how to communicate.
Now we're moving into quantum
fields and, you know, entanglement
theory and other things.
But it's not as difficult as you
think when you have a quiet mind.
And I think, you know, if you meditate
and if you trust your intuition, you
trust when those little voices come in.
And so having taught interspecies
communication for, you know, 40 years,
and looking at other people that have done
it, like, you know, I've told this story
in the book too about the cowboy who,
you know, his horse was all sweaty and he
asked me to go out on the range with him
and count dry cows when I got to school.
And, and I said, "Okay."
And he shows up with a pickup truck
and no horse trailer, and I'm like,
"Hmm, where's your horse trailer?"
And he's like, "Oh, I thought you
told me you had a jumping horse,"
because I had a jumper from California.
And then he whistles and his
horse comes in out of pasture,
and it's all sweaty and messed up.
And, and I said, "Don't you wash
your horses after you're done?"
You know, I'm from California,
I'm 18, we clean our horses.
And he looked at me and he was so
puzzled again, and he's like Well,
if you just worked 16 hours and were
all sweaty and hot, would you want to
be messed with or go out and roll in
the dirt and eat with your friends?
I'm like, "Good point number two."
Anyway, he kept this up, then he finally
cleaned him off, put him in, whistled.
The horse jumps in the back of the
pickup truck with his dog, and I
go, "How'd you teach him that?"
And he is looking at me so puzzled,
like he's as puzzled by me as I
am by him, and he goes, "I didn't.
He just wants to go to work with me."
In that moment, I knew he had what I had.
He didn't know he had it.
I'm going to study what he has, and
I'm going to start to see what are the
similarities, and that's when I developed
like the techniques which I've put in the
book, like OFFER techniques, being open,
friendly, focused, empathetic, respectful.
How to evaluate the sight,
the, the, the energy exchange,
slowing your brain waves down.
You know, multiple channels to
get yourself into the channel of
communication where you can hear and
send thoughts, feelings, smell, you know.
Because it's, it is a brain exercise, and
with all of the distractions we have, it's
hard for people to hear things because
we have so much chatter everywhere.
And so teaching communication,
I think that's one of the
things the horses can do.
And, you know, having, you know,
talked, worked with autistic folks,
early on I realized autistic children
knew how to focus like the horse does.
They knew how to sense all the
sensory experiences that a horse
has, the loud noises, the smells,
and the horse has to filter all
that through for us to be with us.
And so I actually used studies from
autism on what's called shared awareness,
where you're not sure how you're
communicating, but you are communicating.
In the early work back in the
'70s was all, that was the
term we used, shared awareness.
You, you knew you were communicating,
and that model of working in the '70s and
'80s with how communi- psychologists were
working in trying to understand autism,
and you probably have more input on this
too, the model worked very well in trying
to teach people how to relate to horses.
And to this day, I can teach all
the techniques, but the simplest one
I say that gets people into their
emotional part is pretend that horse
is a four-year-old little autistic
brother, and you treat him like that.
And then their energy shifts, they're
kind, they're soft, they're supportive,
they're aware of what that horse
is going through, and suddenly the
horse walks in the ring with them.
So- It's, it's getting us into the
part of the brain where we can slow
down, process all this stimulus, filter
out what's the information we need.
And oftentimes when we ask a question,
I think the biggest thing is people
don't believe they can do it.
But when you have, you know, I,
I used to have groups, and I'd
have them all ask the same horse
the same question independently,
and then I'd bring them back.
And oftentimes there were some
people that didn't get anything,
'cause they didn't trust, but people
would be in the same ballpark.
Like they say, "Well,
the horse is lonely."
And then the next person would
say, "The horse is lonely 'cause
its friends went to a horse show."
Next person says, "Well, the horse
is upset because his friends are all
gone and his waterer doesn't work."
So they were getting way more information,
some people, without even knowing they
were getting that kind of information.
So studying how people process that
information, how do they get the knowledge
that I can get, and then teaching it.
So I've taught, you know, for a number
of years at the Nippon Animal Science
University, the vets, the graduate vet
students, on how to do interspecies
communication, and then the vets
were teaching it to their students.
Rupert Isaacson: Which
animal science university?
Maryann Simmonds: Nippon Animal Science.
Where's that?
In Tokyo.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
That's what I was going to assume.
Yes,
Maryann Simmonds: Tokyo.
And- How'd you
Rupert Isaacson: end up working there?
Maryann Simmonds: I was doing a
flower essence conference in Scotland
at Findhorn on a- flower essences
for animals, and met a cardiologist
that was head of the vet school m-
amazing man, Mac at that conference.
And we started sending flower essences
through the internet, and then he had me
come over and start doing training, and
then I trained his wife, and then they
started sending students over to my ranch.
And so I started getting a whole lot of
students I could train to be teaching it.
So they actually went on to teach at
international vet conferences, the
model, because they needed to validate.
And Japanese are so connected, like
all the exercises I would give them,
they would just like all be finished.
I'm like, "How did you do that so fast?"
They'd think a thought,
they all knew what it was.
I go, "Okay, think of an animal,
we're going to act it out."
And they're like, "No, we're done."
I'm like, "How can you be done?"
Well, and they'd go through, and they
all got ⦠As soon as one person would
think a deer, and when another person
would think a rabbit, they'd go rabbit.
They like reading each other's
thoughts all the time, because they
were in that quieter inner space.
Even though there's a lot, they've
learned how to filter what's out here
away so they can stay in their own little
space, and I found that very interesting.
So I, I've made it my life I mean,
that's why, you know, I put together
Horse By Nature and gave so much on
communication, is that there's no one
way to do it, but pick a channel, pick a
model, pick something and start practicing
it so that you can trust yourself.
When someone says, "You need to take that
whip and hit that horse, and, you know,
take that crop and make him go in," and
your voice quickly goes, "No, don't hit
me," you know where that comes from.
It's not projection, and that
means you need to be clear.
Or a horse says, "Don't
touch me right now.
I'm gonna bite you."
You know that, and you know that
the horse is talking to you.
Yeah.
And then you can ask questions.
And so, yeah, the whole communication
and consciousness, and that's where,
you know, sending at no distance, moving
your energy into the horse, feeling it,
moving it out so you can sense what the
horse is feeling, all kinds of things.
This would, that would
be a whole nother talk.
Rupert Isaacson: Devil's advocate
question, because obviously you're
preaching to the converted, and
obviously I'm the sort of bloke who
rides across Mongolia from shaman
to shaman with my autistic kid, so
let's assume I'm a friend of the woo.
However, one of the ⦠Th-
there are extremes.
We talked about bitterness, but the
Western mind tends to work in extremes.
So either the problem is force
coercion, whether with a horse, whether
an autistic kid, whatever, or the
absolute opposite to the point where
there's a vacuum and no leadership.
So one of the difficulties for me
is I sort of tread the line between
let's get things done here and let's
absolutely also communicate cr- inter-
cross-species, cross, more than a
cross-species, cross-plant, cross-
stone, cross-jellyfish, cross, you know.
Yes, yes, yes, and at the same time,
let's work together to do a job.
So this sometimes can lead to an, an
uncomfortable paradoxical position where
people from the best of motives, from
very, very good reasons, then become
so scared they won't even touch their
horse or, you know, offer leadership of,
of any kind, and feel that they don't
have the right to or that they can't.
And then the horse is like,
"Well, why are we here?
What am I doing with you?"
And I was a, I was, I was giving a demo
last year at a, a thing in Montana,
and, It came up that somebody said,
"Well, I feel, Rupert, that when you
were demonstrating these patterns on
the ground, which are the basis of the
class- Old Masters classical system,
you didn't really ask the horse, you
just kind of went in and did them."
And I said, "Oh, well, that's because
you had your eye on that other exhibitor
over there who was doing their thing, so
obviously you were looking at that person.
What you didn't see was the 20 minutes
that I was spending with this horse that
I've just gotten to know, getting to know,
and that involved just being together.
That involved standing together.
That involved finding the scratchy spot.
That involved chatting.
That involvedâ¦"
But I said, "You know what it also
involves is a lot of prayer, and it's
just that the prayers, I'm, I'm doing
them silently because if I was to
do them out loud, they'd take a long
time, and they would get in the way of
that other person's thing over there.
But believe me, that's going on.
Why are you assuming that
that's not going on?"
And then they said, "Well, she swished
her tail while you were asking."
I said, "Well, don't you
ever swish your tail a bit?
I mean, are youâ¦
A, there were flies around, but B, are
you not sometimes a little annoyed,
or are you not sometimes a little
effortful, and you kind of stick
your tongue out or frown or something
or while you figure something out?
Or is, is that stress, or is that
effort, and is all stress bad?
I mean, when I'm figuring out how to start
my Zoom call because I'm a Cro-Magnon, I'm
finding I'm going through a little bit of
stress, but the dopamine payoff is huge
because I get to talk to Mary Ann Simons.
You know?
So- I, y- y- y- you don't think that
the horse is enjoying this process of
discovery that involves some effort.
What about when they have to go
and find water and it's an effort?
Or what about when they
get grumpy with each other?
Or what about when you get
grumpy with a, your fellow human?
Is that the end of the world?
Or, you know, why, why are we
thinking in these extremes?
And then the following day I
thought, "Well, gosh, if that's what
people wanna hear, I'm gonna tell
them the exact prayers I'm doing."
So before I did my demo I said, "Look,
yesterday somebody said this, so here's
actually what's going on internally."
And I invoked all my ancestors and I
prayed to all the different gods and
goddesses of the horse, and to Jesus,
and to the Buddha, and to D- ⦠and
to, you know, the planet, and toâ¦
You know, I said, "This is what's going
on," but it's an internal process.
Yeah.
And yeah, I'm asking the horse for
permission, but the horse can't sort of
send me an email, three-page triplicate
document signed by their lawyer, you know?
So we do have to take some
things on intuition and trust.
So y- you know what, the horse
world is swinging between these two
extremes of force and coercion as
one might see in the worst of, say,
sport riding, 'cause there's also a
lot of good stuff in sport riding.
It, it's getting a very bad rap right now.
It's not all the devil, but
there is some devil in it, yeah.
To this kind of absolute extremist,
almost sort of fundamentalist approach
out on the other side, and I'm not
sure horses want to be involved
with that kind of extreme monkeydom.
Do they?
I mean, do they not just- Well-
buddy up and hop in the pickup truck
with your rancher friend and go to work
Maryann Simmonds: I, again, w- it's very
easy to categorize all horses, all humans.
Mm-hmm.
And I can tell you every
horse is different.
There are basic innate behaviors that
are within every horse, but how they
utilize and their communication skills,
so much of their behavior is learned.
It has astonished me that when people
buy a horse, they don't even not
wanna know where it came from, its
history, how was it raised, was it
raised with its mother, other foals.
Th- none of this.
And all that history, that's when
the horse, zero to two is when a
horse learns what the world is like.
Rupert Isaacson: Absolutely.
And
Maryann Simmonds: the feeling of the
welfare that's finally getting into
the sport horse world, but d- I had
wild horses and I've had domestic
horses, and I had wild horses.
My wild horses were specifically picked
to do a study on, and I can tell you one
of the, the two of the wild horses would
prefer to stay in their stalls rather
than their paddocks or their pasture,
and they would make my poor Thoroughbred
have to go outside and stand guard
so they could be all cozy and comfy.
I would play music for them.
One mare loved it.
She'd come in with the music.
The other one left.
She didn't like it at all.
So, you know, watching the individualism
from the same herd of two mares,
same age, different mothers but the
differences that they had, the choices
that they make, and I think that's
the key is giving a horse some choice.
And y- well, to say that a horse
does not have fun, there are horses
that will race each other out there.
And I mean, I, I remember being years
ago at a sports conference it's the
Association of Equine Sports Medicine,
which is no longer, but the science and
Tufts was going through all the stuff
they do to look whether a horse can run
and how they're gonna be and their heart.
And some old breeder stood up and he
goes, "I just thought you'd watch the
foals out there racing each other,
matching each other up the hill.
You could tell who's gonna wanna
run because they would pace each
other and one would just take off."
And, you know, it was a mental thing.
So some horses love to
run, but others don't.
It's like saying they all need
outside time of at least three hours.
Yeah, tell the mare in the barn that
kicks the fence down and flipped
over trying to get out of her paddock
to come back to her stall that.
You're supposed to stay out
for three hours now, and she's
like, "I don't wanna stay out.
I don't like the bugs out here."
Yeah.
And so y- we have to be mindful that
every horse is different and have
sort of our open checklist to feel.
Stress is not a bad thing.
We don't evolve without some stress.
Rupert Isaacson: No, absolutely.
We're meant for- You need variability.
Maryann Simmonds: Yes, yes.
So horses do like to work.
Some of them are workers and in the book
I go through personalities of horses.
So if you're a worker, get a horse
that has a work ethic personality.
If you're a I wanna ride two, three
times a week, I'm kinda lazy, I don't
want a horse that's gonna get too wild,
get the beach boy mentality horse, you
know, that just kinda hangs out and is
happy socializing or going on trail.
Horses have different personalities,
and they don't all fit into
their friends group either.
So there are horses that would rather
be with their human friends because
they're better and more adapted than
their horse friends, which beat them up.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
It's interesting though, isn't it,
how frequently people choose the exact
opposite of themselves in horses?
The, the person who only
wants to ride once or twice a
week picks the most fire-iest
Thoroughbred Anglo Arab they can.
Or, you know, it, it's, it's just,
we, we see this all the time.
But of course, I guess we see this in
human relationships as well, to some
degree we often pick our opposites.
I guess that's the universe at
work and God's sense of humor.
In your book then, given that, yes,
of course, all horses are individuals,
all humans are individuals, and all
horse-human combos are individual-
Your book, Horse by Nature, you're
offering people a set of tools for
how to best communicate based on all
this knowledge you have with wild
horses and with domestic horses.
Give us the skinny.
Give us the 101, the basic toolkit
with the, with the cavi- caveat that
yes, yes, yes, this can be adapted.
Yes, yes, yes, this isn't dogma.
But nonetheless, what's the basic toolkit?
Maryann Simmonds: Well, the book I think
just the, the way to give a 360 view is
I didn't wanna write another book, and
I surveyed the industry and surveyed
people, and what I got was people wanted
a tip book, simple little tip book.
So I told Trafalgar that, "Okay, I'll
just do a little simple tip book."
Well, the simple tip book turned
out to be one of the largest
books they've ever published.
It's like 450 pages.
But I did it in a way you can
just pick it up and open it.
So the first section's all wild horses
and functional social behavior, how
they communicate, how they function
out there, so that you understand,
like the National Geographic
version of the horse without humans.
It's horses without humans.
The second section is horses with
humans, how we can help your horse be
more functional as a horse, because we
assume the horse knows it's a horse and
it knows how to act, and they don't.
Some of these horses
have no self-identity.
They don't know what they are.
They haven't been around enough functional
horses to know they're a horse or
how to act, so we have to teach them.
And if you teach a horse how to greet,
how to make eye contact, how to do a
nose bump, how to do a buddy scratch,
they suddenly are your best friend
because they're like, "Oh my gosh,
now I know why I've been so nervous."
They don't self-analyze, but they
like start to relax because now
they know how to make friends.
But they didn't know they
were supposed to do that.
They learned not to look at
people, not to touch people.
So helping a horse learn how to be a
horse is first, and be functional as
a horse, and learn how to communicate.
And then the last section is on welfare
ethics and, and where do we go from
here, because I think the horse's role in
society is changing, and it has to evolve.
Part of it's the social pressure
of, you know, social licensing.
Are we gonna be able to compete?
You know, ideally, hopefully we'll
compete only with horses that are
enjoying it and having fun, but we're a
long way away from determining that yet.
We can't agree on how,
what welfare standards are.
And so I think our best tools are learning
to develop yourself as a, a clear to-
assessment of who am I and what do I
want, and am I pure in my thinking and
my thoughts and, and without judgment,
so that I can get to know another
species and ask the right questions
of who are you, and I'll help teach
you how to be a functional horse, and
I'll be a functional human, and we'll
open up the communication channels,
and you'll be able to talk to me.
And horses are so readily eager to
talk when, when you do that for them.
And people so misunderstand them, that the
book has red tips, blue tips, green tips.
And the red tips are you
really need to know these.
If you don't wanna do anything but go
through and just read the red tips,
it, you'll know a lot about horses.
I want safety, I want comfort.
That's what a horse thinks about.
And where do I get safety and comfort?
Not from food and water as much.
I get it from my friends.
But if I don't have friends, then
I go back to the space, because
that's what my association, 'cause
they're associative learners.
So if the space is f- is safety and
comfort, then I'll bond to a space.
If you're safety and
comfort, think about it.
If you, the human, are the safety and
comfort, you're the safe space, horse runs
to you And people are always surprised
when they get to that relationship and
they're like, "I never thought my horse
would do that, but my horse didn't
want to run off with the other horses.
It stayed with me," because they
built what you were talking about.
You spent time preparing, getting to know
the horse, doing prayers, connecting.
And when you spend that time connecting
emotionally with the horse, helping
the horse be a better horse, as
a horse, just spending time doing
horse time, that horse wants you.
And that's where people have
lost that ability to spend
horse time, that we love horses.
Instead, they always have to
be doing something for us.
And if we can learn how to develop the
relationship and communicate first,
and I've done it in the book, there's
pictures, so if you don't like to read,
there's plenty of pictures with subtitles.
There's research, so you can scan QR
codes and get the research if you don't
believe me, because we are evolving
a lot of tools to assess horses.
But in a nutshell, the best tool we
have is be the best human you can be.
You don't have to know everything.
You just have to be clear on yourself and
be, be pure and be silent, and then help
your horse be the best horse it can be.
And you talk about stress.
It's really having boundaries and clarity
so the horse knows how to relate to you.
And if you don't know my space,
your space, how to stay out of
my space, and the horse keeps
pushing you, it's not a bad horse.
It's a horse that has no boundaries,
but it's asking you, put a boundary.
If it were in a natural herd, there's
a boundary, and so many of the problem
horses I work with that rear and buck
and kick, and they've had, they've
learned how to catch the whip or
catch the rope or attack, because
they don't like that interference.
Mostly, and, you know, I'll
use a squirt gun or something
to get the message across.
It's funny, but it's, it's my
emotional voice, and people used to
say, "Oh, she's the horse whisperer."
No, I'm the horse yeller.
I have no problem saying, "You
get out of my space, and you stay.
Your mother did not teach you manners,"
and that- ⦠that anger energy makes
the horses, especially stallions,
they're like, "Oh, oh, oh, I think she's
upset with me," and, and they back off.
But you go in with a tough attitude,
like a male energy, put a chain
over their nose and start jerking,
you've just elicited anger in them.
So when you can do things, start your
communication with humor, with compassion,
with empathy, and open up those channels,
it's a natural progression of being able
to feel and sense what your horse needs.
Rupert Isaacson: Now,
humor's a really big one.
Obviously, humor is perspective.
Humor, you crack a, a joke at the
right moment, and all the tension goes
out of a situation because suddenly
everyone can see the situation from the
outside and the absurdity and the common
humanity and the ⦠However, you can
only Be humorous when you feel safe.
Maryann Simmonds: Yes, absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: And this is tough
for people who, for whatever reason,
don't feel safe around horses.
Yeah.
And one cannot feel safe until
a certain amount of familiarity
has happened, until a certain
amount of mentorship has happened.
You know, people like you or people
like me who grew up with horses, what's
missing from the I grew up with horses
is I was mentored by other horse,
older horse people when I was young
about how to be with horses safely.
If that hasn't happened to you, how
can you possibly feel safe around an
animal that weighs what a truck weighs
and solves its problems by running away
violently and has a sense of humor, and
you are always the butt of the joke.
Because h- horses are humorous,
but they have ⦠There's a
reason why we call it horseplay.
So how do you help people to find
that ease when they are coming from a
state of unfamiliarity, and therefore-
Yeah ⦠actually they are not safe?
Maryann Simmonds: I u- I mean, not
everybody can be around horses safely if
they can't manage their own energy, and
having worked with various populations,
for instance, women that have gone through
abuse of relationships, if the horse
continually walks in front of them and
they're used to leading a horse in, in, in
nature, whatever horse, and they're under
any sort of stress, whatever, whoever's
eye is in front is the decision maker.
So you'll watch horses being chased, and
horses will drop back to let a, a horse
that's stronger get in front, 'cause
they don't wanna make the decisions.
So it's very important to
have eye contact, and that's
true with most social mammals.
Eye contact's the first level.
You have to maintain eye contact,
because you're reading behavior.
You're reading what's the feelings.
But when you let a horse's eye get
in front of you and it starts to be
fearful, it's gonna run right over you.
Mm.
Because that's horse, that's
just normal horse play.
I mean, not play.
That's just how the rules go.
Yeah.
But if that horse never learned that,
you need to work on my space, your space.
Stand still or move, and you
don't learn that in a round pen.
That makes no sense to a horse.
There's an appropriate use of a
round pen, but it's not just set
establishing spatial respect.
So the first thing a foal learns
when it's, when it's born is
spatial respect, spatial awareness.
It has to stay at its mother's side,
and the other mares will push it back
to its mother's flank, because if they
have to take off, like now galloping,
if that foal's not where it's supposed
to be, some horse is gonna trip over it.
Mm.
And the whole, everybody gets injured.
So that foal learns very
early where to stay.
They all do.
Then it's my space, your space,
and this is what interested me
studying so many different herds.
While the cultures could vary, the horse
etiquette was almost uniformly taught
among everyone, and that was eye contact,
nose bump, and then if you're a friend
and I need a scratch, a buddy scratch.
So you're reinforcing
forebrain, hindbrain.
You're reinforcing social bonds,
and a lot of time when they had time
was spent reinforcing social bonds.
But the eye contact, so much
of it was done with a look.
You, and yeah, you could see the
ears, you could see the tail, but
that wasn't what was being read.
It was eye, and it started with greetings.
You know, two strange stallions might
come, and they might posture and do their,
you know, digging and all that, but then
they look at each other, and if they see
an invite, they'll come and they'll smell,
and oftentimes they'll say hi nose to
nose, and then they'll do a buddy scratch,
no fighting, and then they take off Other
times they see a stallion come in or with
an eye and they would see it as a threat.
And Robert Vavra did a beautiful
movie, Such Is The Nature of
Horses, with beautiful photography
on the Camargue horses.
Mares, when I did my early
research on social behaviors, it
was all about the male horses.
It was all about aggressiveness
and fighting and stallions.
No one looked at how many
mare glances were being given.
I could tell you who the social
facilitator was by how many glances
were given and how many glances
of other horses to that horse.
It wasn't obvious unless you were
watching them look at each other.
And that, that connection was
stabilizing the connection.
So I teach, I don't care what method
you use, but start with horse method.
It's the easiest.
Teach your horse manners.
My space, your space.
Stand still or move.
People are always laughing at my horse.
She's 17.3.
She's probably the best trained horse
in Palm Beach County these days because
I find it amusing she's so smart, and
she is a very functional horse, that
I can open her stall door and walk
away, go have lunch and come back.
She won't leave, because she knows
she was told to stay in that space,
and that's without food in her stall,
because she's told to stay in that space.
And people get surprised when
a horse learns my space, your
space, and they get rewarded.
And this is where you have to
reward them, not with food.
You reward them with social contacts
and a buddy scratch for staying in the
space and listening, because whoever
gets the biggest space is the one
that gets to make all the decisions.
So if a horse is walking on top of you,
yeah, I would be afraid of a horse like
that, because if they don't honor my
space, I have been known to turn around
and yell at stallions or put duct tape
on their lips to say, "Knock it off."
You know, nothing hitting, just so
they can't bite when they try to
bite you, because they, if they don't
have a chain over their nose and
they've learned to pull on a chain
and they've had grooms that have
jerked on them, a lot of stallions
will try to bite you in the shoulders.
Mm-hmm.
So I'm not gonna put a
chain on a horse's nose.
I want you out of my space.
Well, if, if young horses,
they'll strike at you.
That's not safe.
So I put a little electrician's
tape on their little whiskers, and
then they can't open their mouths.
And so it completely occupies
their brain where they can't think.
And I'll say, "You know, I'll take it
off, but you keep your lips to yourself."
So they have to learn as if
they were in a horse herd.
I'm not gonna go bite and chase them.
I don't, I can't, don't
have that capability.
But I use a paddock a lot to
say, "You stay in that corner.
You may not come into my
space," or I'll put food in.
And so there's different ways to
teach it depending on the skill level.
But if you don't have a horse
that respects you on the ground,
how do you expect them to respect
you when you're on their backs?
If you're not safe to them on the
ground and save their little behinds
a few times, then you can simulate
that by having scary things come and
move away that you can control, and
the horse is like, "How'd you do that?
How'd you make that go away?"
They don't know that you
can control objects around.
And so you can really elevate your
relationship on saving your horse's life
a few times, which is why oftentimes
herds would be thrown in together,
wild herds that didn't get along, that
were kicking each other to pieces.
You put them on a 12-hour van ride
together and take them off the
trailer, oh, they're all best friends
now, because they went through a
heightened stressful event together.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm.
Maryann Simmonds: And that bonds them.
So there's different ways to
do that, and I don't recommend.
If people do not feel safe
in themselves, you can't.
But with different populations, you have
to be able to be matched up with a horse
that's going to help draw that out of you.
And so some horses are just very defiant
horses, and they are not safe to be around
kids that are, don't feel confident.
I just had to send one away the, today.
He's fascinating to me.
I love the fact, he loves working,
he loves my space, your space.
Did everything right, and I
have a little video of him.
I gave him a flag, and rather than move
away, he's gotten so brave, he was gonna
hold his ground, and rather than move,
he did like a kickboxing up in the air
a few times, and then kicked it and ran.
And then I got really strong
with my energy and chased him,
and he ran off with his tail in
the air going, "Aren't I brave?"
But if you saw that, you'd
go, "He's a dangerous horse."
He is dangerous to someone who
doesn't understand his behavior,
and he's the same horse that wants
to not be behind you when you lead.
He wants to be in front until
you, I have to yell at him and
say, "You get out of my space.
You are a bad horse.
You are a naughty horse."
And he's like, "Okay."
But he, that doesn't mean
he's not gonna try it again.
That kind of horse, not
safe for a beginner.
No.
But for someone who understands horses,
that sees the talent, very entertaining,
'cause he acts like a functional horse,
which people don't like that sometimes.
Right,
Rupert Isaacson: and well, that's
where the brilliance comes, isn't it?
You know, that, yeah.
Yeah.
I, I, I want my horses to be challenging
me, because I want that brilliance.
And at the same time, there are times
when I need to say to them, "Dude,
in this hour, I really need you.
I've got this vulnerable kid here.
I really need you to be my partner here."
And so much of it's on fairness, you know?
It's a, it's like- Mm ⦠I will let
them treat me as fair game in other
situations, within reason, you know?
Yeah.
So that I can kind of go to, almost
telepathically say to them, You
know and I know that I've been fair.
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: You know?
You got to get away with
kind of all that stuff.
Yeah, you know.
So now I'm setting the boundary.
Yeah.
For this hour, be cool.
Yeah.
And then they're like, "I'm
cool," because that's fair.
And then I can go out a bit later, "No,
you can be not so cool if you wanna be."
You know, it's, it's so interesting this
inter- but as you say, it's, it, so much
of that comes from sort of confidence
and, and, and familiarity, you know.
It's, it's, it's also
interesting what you said about-
People often don't know the,
the real story of, of the horse.
And so generally when I'm going out to
clinic or trying, you know, everyone
says, "My horse was traumatized," and
everyone says, "My horse is sensitive."
It's like, well, go figure,
every mammal is sensitive.
Some are more stoic about how they show it
or not show it or hide it, but you can be
damn sure that every horse is sensitive,
every human is sensitive, every rat is
sensitive, and every cat is sensitive.
But their style of expression may vary.
And then the other one is
they've all been traumatized.
It's like, well, that's interesting that
that's become so ubiquitous now that if
I go into a barn of tw- 20 people in a
clinic and they're all saying their horse
was traumatized, while it's entirely
possible that because time on planet Earth
does lead to unpleasant situations these
do not look like horses to me that are
cowering in a corner.
They, if, if they've gone through
something, they seem pretty resilient.
So shall we not talk
about their resilience?
Because if we only talk about their
trauma, are we o- are we maybe
writing a script to keep them there?
I don't know.
That, that's interesting.
But, but what you, you haven't told
me is e- exactly what you just said.
What were the horse's first two years?
Did they live wild on the mountain
and then they were brought in?
Were they raised on a stud farm
and actually, or were they bottle
raised, or how were they socialized?
Were they not socialized?
Now, of course, you may not know, because
you bought the horse when he was nine,
and the history's in a, in a murky past.
But then tell me about the horse's
behavior at home, and then maybe
we can get to the bottom of it,
because this might give us some
clues about how to proceed.
Are there some holes
that need to be filled?
Did the horse learn, as you say,
the, the nose bump, the scratch,
and forebrain, hindbrain, and if
Should we try that?
Should we try that and see
if that hole is filled?
And if not, sh- should
we try other things?
So that's why I think your work
is really important, because it
does bring things down to some
really usefully clear bottom lines.
You talked about your red tips.
Mm-hmm.
The other ones are blue and- Green
green?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So
Maryann Simmonds: red are-
Rupert Isaacson: What's, what are the
Maryann Simmonds: blue ones?
The red ones are must know.
Read that.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: The blue is-
Give, give, give us some blues.
Maryann Simmonds: Okay.
The blues are, for instance young
siblings in nature will often babysit
their sibling brothers and sisters.
In other words, even stallions
must babysit their offspring,
and the mares go off to eat.
And while that doesn't seem
important in a domestic world, it
is, because every horse has a job.
And so they aren't just
standing around doing nothing.
Mm-hmm.
They are directed to do things,
and they are very- That's exactly
⦠responsible to doing those things.
But we don't ever tell a horse,
"Keep track of this horse,"
or, "Do this," or, "Do that."
You know, I, again, my mare is
fun because I can put her with any
horse, and she will give it manners,
because she learned them somewhere.
She's French.
I don't know who raised her, but
they did a good job, because she
naturally knows how to be a horse.
But when she came in, she was
shut down, turned into the
corner, didn't wanna meet humans.
Because she was a jumper,
she'd been put to work.
She didn't like where life was going,
tried to bite people that came in.
I went in and said, "Wait,
you don't even know me.
You don't even know me.
You should at least give me
a chance to meet," you know?
And started scratching her.
She didn't like that, 'cause she
was pretty armored and tight.
But with a few scents, and that's
where using aromatherapy to tie
up the brain, she was like, "Oh,
that's really interesting smells."
And she started to relax, and then
she started to realize she could
talk, and I wasn't gonna get mad
at her, and if she was biting
'cause she hurt, I'm gonna fix it.
And so, you know, those are the
kind of tips in there that when your
horse is, is rarely wrong they're
gonna communicate things to you.
So I'll, I'll take a random one.
You know, there's, there's a
lot ⦠The book's actually gonna
come out this year in German
with the F- F- the FS over there.
So here's a tip that when weaning foals,
for instance, as a group, place an adult
teacher horse with them so that they
learn the experience of horsedom without
just putting them all into, you know,
kindergarten and juvenile delinquents.
And these breeding farms that
throw all the foals out when
they're weaned, not good.
You just basically threw a bunch of
preschoolers out with no teacher And
even an old gelding or an old mare or
a school mom, older horses teach them.
So why are we not using horses to teach?
I mean-
Rupert Isaacson: Mm
⦠Maryann Simmonds: early on, it,
it, people don't realize how much
behavior is learned from horses.
And, you know, as a behaviorist,
I remember a stallion that was an
Arab stallion that was attacking
people, and of course the horse
had learned to jump up on people's
backs and do all these cute things.
Well, it had been, quote, "trained"
to, it was attacking everything.
You'd try to put it in a round
pen, it'd come after the whip.
And not mean, just all games.
So I realized all the cues that people
had given this horse, this horse was smart
enough to learn how to override them.
So that's not, it, there was no helpful
way to help this one, so I put him
out with a bunch of brood mares, and
at about, by the end of the week, he
was standing at the gate very humbled.
And it was interesting watching, these
are domestic mares, Thoroughbreds,
and the old mare snaked her head.
I mean, this is very
consistent horse behavior.
She pinned her ears and
snaked her head when they were
eating gra- eating their hay.
He didn't know what that meant.
No one taught him.
He didn't grow up with horses.
He grew up with humans that taught
him how to jump on their backs.
And it just seemed unfair to try to use
a human to try to teach him how to be
a horse when I got horse teachers here.
Yeah.
So, you know, that's another one.
Horses are often better teachers
than humans, but find a good horse.
Mm.
If the mare is letting her six-month-old
colt mount her, she is not a good mom.
Mm.
She needs to be a better mom, so
put that guy with a better mom.
So there, there's a whole lot that
if you understand early childhood
development of your horse and what it
should know, even if you get a rescue,
you get a, let's see what you know.
Do you know spatial awareness?
Do you know eye contact?
Do you know how to communicate?
Do you know how to do these things?
Because a horse that doesn't, do
you know how to greet friends?
Do you know how to do a buddy scratch?
There's nothing more fun to watch a horse
that meets another horse for the first
time and have no idea how to do a buddy
scratch, and I have videos of that where a
pony's trying to get the horse to scratch,
and the horse is pulling back going, "I
have no idea what you're doing to me.
Why are you biting me?"
And finally, it's something
clicked in the brain.
It's like, "Oh, am I
supposed to do that to you?"
And it's taking bites out of the mane.
It had no idea, and now
that horse learned it.
He was a little too in
every horse's space.
He'd walk up to a complete strange
horse and try to scratch on them.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Take it back a little bit
because they learn behavior.
So you have to know first how horses
act with each other and what they should
know, and I think that's important.
And, you know, you get to the
green tips, it's nice to know.
It's not gonna make or break anything,
but it's still very helpful to know.
For instance, how many neurons are in
the horse's nose versus the hind end.
You know, it's not- Yeah ⦠critical,
but there's probably, you know, or
there's, sorry, one neuron in the
brain, proprioceptors in the, in the
nose, about 20, so it's very specific.
You get to the hind end, it's
one neuron in the brain to
about 20,000 proprioceptors.
So why does your horse
pick up the opposite leg?
Because it has no idea where it is.
It can't, doesn't know.
You have to feel it.
So there's little things to open up
the channels, and all of a sudden
the horse picks up the correct leg.
So while those are not critical, it
really helps you in horse management
to understand the biomechanics and
the neurophysiology of the horse.
So I don't go into great depth
because there's other people like Dr.
Peters' book on neurophysiology-
Mm-hmm ⦠and horse brain, human brain
Rupert Isaacson: that- Yeah.
Steven Peters.
Yeah.
Anyone watching and
listening, check out Dr.
Steven Peters.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Maryann Simmonds:
There's some great stuff.
So I tried to give an overview with
tips that are gonna help people
that this is really critical.
Learn it.
These are important, and then these are
nice to know, and that way people feelâ¦
What I hear most and, and interesting
from people that n- don't know much about
horses, and then old, old cowboys from
Texas, you know, that have called or
written me and said, "I just described
what they do and been doing for 50 years."
And he said, "You know, you just
described it to a T," because they
don't know how to talk about this.
Yeah.
They don't know how to talk about that
intuition of feeling what the horse is
saying and then knowing how to connect
to it, and so that's what I try to do is
not only the way I did it, but understand
the way other people that were doing
it, how do they do it, put it together
in different tools to give people so
that they can see what works for them.
But understand the horse first.
Rupert Isaacson: Brilliant.
Well, look, I feel that this was just
part one of a greater conversation.
Maryann Simmonds: I know.
We- We didn't even get into
the consciousness part.
That's the fun part We didn't get to the
Rupert Isaacson: consciousness part and
we didn't go into the horse welfare part.
No.
And, and so listeners and viewers, when
Mary Anne and I we were sitting together
in Florida a couple of months ago, and
the, we were talking at some length
about horse welfare in the sport world,
and the fact that the aftercare for
Thoroughbreds is now becoming a thing,
and the racing industry is aware that
its social license is, you know, not
something it can take for granted anymore.
However, the jumper world, the
dressage world, is still working
somewhat complacently in this regard.
And you know, those of you who know my
work obviously know that I deal with a
lot of rehab and a lot of second career.
And Mary Anne has been really active in
this and working behind the scenes on
this, particularly within the sport world.
So we wantâ¦
I, I want to, if possible, so we're
approaching the two-hour mark, and I
wanted to talk about A Horse by Nature.
I wanted to plug your book.
I wanted people to know who you were.
I wanted to turn on, you
know, my crowd to you.
And by the way, it's Linda
Tellington-Jones who said,
"You've got to do it."
And finally, I was like, "Yeah,
yes, Linda, yes, of course."
'Cause if Linda tells me to do
something, of course I jump.
Even if it takes me a little while.
And by the way, I won't be
leaving this chair until Mary Anne
Simmons tells me I'm allowed to.
⦠Because even if she leaves the
door open, I will stay here,
even though there's no food.
Until she allows me to.
But all joking aside I think there's a
lot further to go in this conversation.
So with your permission, Mary Anne,
could we call this a, a, an au revoir,
as we- Yep ⦠come to the two-hour mark.
And we will reconvene in a few
weeks and go to the next level
of the conversation, I think.
Because as you say,
consciousness, horse welfare.
I'd like toâ¦
There's a ton of stuff I want to
ask you about, observations that
you made with your wild horses.
Sh- you know, so-
Maryann Simmonds: Absolutely.
And we did Absolutely.
And there are things progressing in
the sport horse welfare world and
things that we started to discuss.
There, there's a lot of things in play
right now, so it'll be interesting.
Yeah.
Every few weeks things
are changing, so yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Good, 'cause that's c- you know,
sort of, I think we have reason to
be cautiously optimistic, which is-
Maryann Simmonds: Yeah ⦠which is good.
Exactly it.
Cautiously optimistic is it.
So yeah, no, this is great.
And you and I know we could talk for six
hours, but that's not needed right now.
We could do- Well,
Rupert Isaacson: we
will talk for six hours.
We'll just break it up into two hours.
Do it in little
Maryann Simmonds: bites, yeah.
Okay.
Very good.
Well, I enjoyed it very much, Rupert.
Thank you.
Rupert Isaacson: Likewise.
Thank you so much.
So yeah, let's just make
a date for the next one.
Okay.
And yeah, we'll see you then.
All right.
Thanks.
Thank you again.
Bye-bye.
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