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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.
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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 have Dr.
Glenn Cochran, who I have known for some
years from when I used to live in Texas.
That cowboy hat is a bit of a
giveaway as to- ... where he might be.
National costume and all that.
Yeah ... but Glenn has been a real
influence on bringing the Western world
and the classical world together, which is
so silly if one thinks about that because
it was always the same world actually.
Yeah.
And it started, of course, with
the conquistadors going across,
you know, but hey, somewhere
along the line it drifted apart.
And he has been a big part of helping
to get working equitation get going,
while still being a working doctor
specializing in the emergency room and
a working cattleman and horse breeder.
Starting, I believe, after probably
quarter horses for many years, P-
Peruvian Passos as ranch horses, and
then from there into the Iberians,
the, the Spanish and the Portuguese
horses while still r- being a doctor,
while still being a cattleman.
So it's a fascinating mix of worlds
and I would say that, you know,
Glenn, you've lived and you are
living a self-actualized life.
Sort of if one was to look up
self-actualized life, you'd
probably find a picture of you
next to that in the dictionary.
So, thank you for coming on, and
it's so good to see you again.
Yeah.
Can you tell us w- how did you start?
W- tell us where are you,
w- where were you born?
How did you get into this
whole horse cattleman thing?
How did you not get so distracted with
medicine that you stopped being a cowboy?
'Cause I, I love the fact that you're a
doctor and a cowboy and a classical rider.
And just, just take us through the story.
Tell us the story of Glenn.
Glenn Cochran: Okay.
Well, I, I was actually born in Indiana.
My, my parents were at university at
Indiana University at the time, so my
first, the first place that, that I
woke up was I was in the bassinet in the
Marion County General Hospital, which was
the, the downtown Indianapolis hospital,
mostly inhabited by Black people.
So I joke around with people, I say,
"Yeah, I don't got any problem with Black
people because I was the only white bean
in a whole nursery full of black beans."
But after that, I my parents moved
around quite a bit but along about...
Well, and in, and in that process I
was always fascinated with horses.
Even I've got pictures of me, I'm
in little short pants, probably
two years old, watching a colt run
across the field with fascination,
so that's just always been there.
And then my dad, anytime- that
we would be around some horses.
He was sort of a, a, a cowboy and a horse
breaker when he was younger, but when
he started going to the, to, well, World
War II kind of broke that up actually.
And but any time we were around
horses that he could get ahold
of, well he was always pitching
me up on a horse someplace.
And of course for a while I was
terrified 'cause they were so big.
But 1959 was when we moved
to College Station, Texas.
He was he taught at, at A&M.
What did he teach?
He was teaching nuclear engineering.
He was one of the first
people to actually do that.
His degree was from Pennsylvania
State, and it was in nuclear physics,
but A&M wanted to start a nuclear
engineering program, and so he
built a reactor- Just before we- let
Rupert Isaacson: me just
ask you a question on that.
Yeah.
Was he part of those
projects in World War II?
Glenn Cochran: Well,
Rupert Isaacson: he,
Glenn Cochran: he was not so
much in, in that during the
war, but right after the war.
He went we, we moved to Oak Ridge,
Tennessee, and he was mostly interested
in, in trying to, to start up the
peacetime uses of atomic energy.
Weapons and that sort of
thing wasn't so much his deal.
But he was on the USS Nautilus
program to, to get the first
nuclear-powered submarine, and a
number of other similar projects.
And then during my lifetime with him,
I would hear about these places like
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Los
Alamos all these different places,
and he would be going off to them.
I n- I never was able to go with
him, but I'd hear about it, and
only last year I finally went to Los
Alamos, New Mexico and actually saw
the place, and man, it is beautiful.
Mm-hmm.
It's an amazing place.
But getting there is not so beautiful.
It's a hairy drive up that
mountain, I'll tell you.
But anyway, '59 we moved to College
Station, and pretty soon after that he,
he made friends with a fella who was a
rancher and a horse breaker and a horse
breeder, a fella named Buck Kidwell.
And he took me out with him to Buck's
one time, and he says, he says,
"Buck this boy needs his own horse."
And so he said, "Well, I'll
tell you what we'll do.
He, he needs to be a member
of the 4H Horse Club.
I've got a colt that,
that I can sell you."
I bought a, a quarter horse for $250,
joined the 4H Horse Club in Brazos
County, and started working with him.
And my, my first job was cleaning
out stalls that hadn't been
cleaned out probably in a decade,
so I felt like a coal miner for
about the first several weeks.
How old were you at this point?
I was about 14, 15.
Okay.
Just starting high school.
Yeah.
And so I, you know, out there chunking
lignite basically into a wheelbarrow.
And, and then he had me
building fences and stuff.
But all along he would, he was
working all the colts that he
was breaking, and he had a pen.
It was a square pen probably
about, mm, say 40 by 40 feet.
And he would start colts with
a hackamore, and he'd start
them with a lot of groundwork.
He, he was pretty unusual in his day.
So he, he would start with groundwork.
He would start the hackamore work,
turning them around and moving them,
and turning around and moving them.
And then when he was ready
for the monkey, guess who?
And so he'd get his big stallion
out there in the pen, and he would
dally the colt up to his saddle
horn, and ge- he said, "Get on."
So I'd have to get on, and of course
my left leg became purple from
banging up against the other horse.
But he'd drag me around that pen
and after a while the colts got used
to having somebody on their back,
and so he'd start letting the rope
out little by little, and then just
e- eventually just hand it to me.
And then all I was supposed to
do, I wasn't supposed to use my
legs much at all, just sit there
and just let the colt walk around.
And when the colt finally, you
know, his head was hanging down and
sweating and everything, well then
he'd say, "Okay, you can get off now."
And so, I'd do that.
So that was my introduction
to horse training.
So then as time went on, well, he gave me
more and more responsibility and we had...
He would get horses in that were
like, some of the big cutting horse
trainers would bring in to him.
And, and I remember one time my dad
was standing by the fence with John
Carter, who was a pretty well-known
cutting horse trainer, and he says my
dad says "What's wrong with this horse?
How come Buck's got him?"
He says, "Well, he was bucking people
off while he was trying to cut cattle."
He says, "Well, that's not a good thing."
He says, "No."
He says, and then my dad says,
"So, so how's he doing now?"
And he says, he says, "Bob, they wouldn't
dare buck with Buck on their back."
And so, and so he would put
me up on some cutting horses.
And of course the other thing he did
was rope, so I, I got into calf roping
and stuff when I was in high school.
I went to some rodeos.
I never was a big champion or anything,
but, but I, I liked calf roping and
I liked the whole concept of working
cattle with a horse and all that.
And I thought I knew something about
cutting horses, but only about a year
or so ago I started working with Cletus
Hulling, who's a fairly well-known
cutting horse trainer down in Brenham,
and I found out the hard way that I
didn't know squat about cutting horses.
Now I'm starting to learn, you
know, the, the actual pattern.
And it's the same thing like you
talk about with classical stuff.
There's a way that the horse has to work.
You build that into them, and then
they learn how to move their bodies.
But they, you know, all they wanna
do is, is run the cow natively.
In fact, this horse I'm working with is
a Lusitano, comes out of primarily bull
fighting bloodlines from the Vega family.
And all he wanted to do was just tear
that cow up, and he was about to lose me.
I went down to start working
with Cletus- And he says, "Well,
you don't do it like that."
He says, "You do it like this."
And he had a mechanical cow down there,
literally a, a fiberglass cow on a
rail that he, he could- Yeah ... when
they, it would change directions,
the cow would change directions.
Scared the living
daylights out of my horse.
And every time I'd go down there he'd,
he'd say, "Okay, Glenn, you ready?"
I says, "I think so."
And he'd hit the button and, brr,
the horse- But we finally got used
to it, and then he got me on live
cattle, and he's a really good coach.
And in fact, we're gonna have a a cow
clinic for part of the working equitation
here in Caldwell in a few weeks, and he's
gonna be the clinician for me for that.
So he's really good.
Well anyway, I go along went off
to college, and I would come back
and visit with Buck periodically.
And, and I remember one time I had...
This was when I was a senior in
college and I'd gotten accepted to
medical school, and I went down there
with Sally, and she'd met him before.
But we go back in there
to, to the corrals.
He was working with a cow, trying to
milk out a cow with a swollen udder,
and he kept throwing the rope over the
top of the cow and trying to catch it
down below, and he was, he was missing.
You know, by this time he was in his 60s.
So I, I said, "Buck, you want
me to go get a chicken catcher?"
A chicken catcher basically is a, is
a clothes hanger that's been stretched
out and it's got a hook on the end, and
you can reach underneath the cow and
catch that rope and bring it through.
And he, "I don't need no
goddamn chicken catcher.
I'm a cowboy."
And Sa- Sally has never forgotten that.
She thought that was the funniest
thing, and she's told that story
millions of times to people.
But that, that pretty well gives
you the personality of Buck Kiddle.
Did he make it?
Did he, did he rope the cow in the end?
Oh yeah, he got the rope, and he,
and he didn't get kicked either.
But anyway, we we kept, after we
got married during my first year of
medical school she was teaching school
and, and we got married and lived in
Houston for three years and a half.
And but we would go up to the
ranch every weekend, and it got
to be where we'd go earlier and
come back to, to Houston later.
And so we were almost making a
three-day weekend out, out of it.
But she would ride- And then
she was teaching, so she'd
go back to work teaching.
She says Monday mornings were pretty
tough sometimes, 'cause she was pretty
bowlegged and kind of sore, 'cause you,
you know, you ride for two days and then
you don't ride for five days, and- Yeah
but anyway my dad had a little ranch.
Actually, he was right
next door to, to Mr.
Kidwell's ranch, which was
about 1,100 acres, his place.
My dad's place was only 50.
And but he ha- he had some quarter horses,
and we had some mares, and we bred them
to whatever stallions we could find,
you know, to get, to make some babies.
So we was always raising colts and
starting them under saddle, pretty much
with his techniques using the hackamore,
and then e- eventually when they started
learning how to turn around and all,
well, then you put a grazing bit on them.
And there was no fore-rein stage or
anything like what they do in California.
It was just- Yeah ... hackamore un- until
they pay attention to you, and then put
the grazing bit, and then just ride them.
And we called ri- When you say
grazing bit, do you mean a snaffle?
It's...
No, the snaffle, we used the snaffle
some along with the hackamore, but
a grazing bit is, is a solid bit.
It's got a, a solid mouth and, and
the, the, the cheeks are swept back.
That's what, that's what makes it
called a grazing bit, 'cause they
can actually graze and, and the
cheeks don't get in their way.
Okay.
But there, but there's no
swivel to it or anything.
The, the old-timey ones that we had.
In fact, I've still got
the first bit I ever had.
So
Rupert Isaacson: it's still a
shank bit, but it's a shank bit
that- It's, it's a, it's a sh-
that is swept back
... Glenn Cochran: yeah.
Okay.
Shank bit.
And at the...
in those days, we had leather curbs.
Mm-hmm.
No chain curbs.
But now we, we use chain curbs some.
But but it was, you know...
And, and we referred to anybody that used
two hands on the reins as plow reining.
That's- Yeah ... that's how
much respect that had, you know.
But you, you would plow rein with the
hackamore until they got started, you
know, bending their necks and all.
So I went along with that kind
of training probably until 1971.
We were living, at that time just outside
of Denver, Colorado, and I, I was in
a bookstore and I found this book.
It, it was 1971 and, and it had just
been published and was called Dressage,
and it was written by Henry Winmullen.
And in that book, of course, he talks
about dressage, and I read all that
stuff, you know, 15 times and tried to
figure out how you do all that, you know.
So then I started working horses
with a, with a, just purely with a
snaffle bit and, and a lot, a lot more
bending, but still I didn't really
have the, the flexion going yet.
And, He, he mentions in the
book the flexions of Baucher.
And so I thought, that's very
interesting, but the problem is
he didn't explain what they were.
Rupert Isaacson: A few years later,
I get- A dressage writer writing for-
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
A few years later- ... an
informed audience
Rupert Isaacson: and
not explaining anything.
Yeah,
Glenn Cochran: yeah.
Yeah, that's it.
So a few years later I got Albert de
Carpentier's book that's published- Yeah
... by Xenophon Press, Richard's outfit, and
he mentions it, and then in his indexes
he actually talks about it, and he, he
explains his version of how to do it.
So I kinda had an idea then.
Well, after we w- of course we
wandered around in Colorado and, and
I lived in New Mexico for a while,
and I cowboyed in, in probably about
five different states in the process.
And all this time I was either a
resident or an intern or I was a
flight surgeon for the Air Force.
That was during Vietnam.
And so, I was, a- any spare time I had
I was out helping people with their
cows, you know, riding horses, riding in
the mountains, all that kind of stuff.
We went elk hunting and all.
Of course, we never got anything,
but it was great just to be
out there in the mountains.
It, it's,
Rupert Isaacson: it's just a great excuse
to go into the mountains, elk hunting.
That's it.
That's it.
It's like f- it's like fishing.
You, you don't go to catch it.
That's- You just go to hang
out by the, by the river.
That's it.
Glenn Cochran: You- Yeah You how
to know when you're done fishing?
When there's no more beer in the cooler.
So anyway, we we got back here to Texas
and the quarter horses were all we had
to start with, and we bought, my, my
dad, my brother, and I bought this ranch.
It's about...
W- what we bought was about 500 acres.
And we, we lived in a, in a house
trailer for a while on it, and then we
built this house that I'm in right now.
About finished that in 1981.
And as time went along, Sally started
developing the empty nest syndrome when
the kids started going off to college.
So she was looking for something to
do, and she met up with a lady named
Eileen Craig, whose husband was a
parasitologist over at the vet school.
And she had been, they had lived in, she's
from, originally from South Africa also.
She's from Bloemfontein and went to
school over in, in Southwest Africa.
Okay.
And then her family, they moved over to,
to New Zealand, so she was kind of more
of a Kiwi than, than a, a Afrikaans,
but she still spoke the language.
And so she married this guy who's a
parasitologist at, at A&M, and they were
living in South America for a while, and
she brought these Peruvians to Caldwell.
They had a place there
not too far from us.
Rupert Isaacson: So- Peruvians being
horses, not people at this point, yes
... Glenn Cochran: yeah.
So, so Sally got to working with
Eileen, and Sally had wanted to ride
sidesaddle, and she figured, "Well,
this is the perfect combination.
This is a smooth horse
that doesn't bounce."
Mm-hmm.
So she started riding sidesaddle.
That built...
We, we started getting experts
from Europe, from England, and
all over the place would come in
and do clinics for sidesaddle.
And so then guess who gets to train
all the Peruvian horses that the
girls are using for their sidesaddle?
And then they formed a team called the
Texas Ladies Aside which is actually the
in the state of Texas it's the official
equestrian drill team of the state of
Texas, but it's not very active anymore.
Okay.
But the, so I was
training Peruvian horses.
Well, I started learning from these
guys from, from Peru- Okay ... how
to, how to use the pole to work around
how to use their version of a bosal,
which is very different from the
California bosal, and how to use four
reins when you're going from bosal into
the, to the, the brida, the bridle.
Yeah.
And fascinating, 'cause all the
rawhide stuff and everything, I
would just eat up with all that.
And, and so, went through that stage.
Well, then one of the teachers, a guy
named, or a lady, excuse me, named Irene
Benjamin, she was originally of Scottish
origin, but she worked all over Kenya
and all kind of stuff, but she was,
she was indeed a, a sidesaddle expert.
She said, "You know, there's a type of
horse that I think you might be interested
in," and she talked about the Andalusians.
And she had a friend that
lived in Louisiana, which is
several hours away from us.
She said, "This, this lady is
a student of Nuno Oliveira."
I said, "So who's Nuno Oliveira?"
She says, "Well, if you don't
know who You- Nuno Oliveira is,
you need to know who he is."
And so we started working with her.
Her name was Diana Christensen.
She's passed away since.
But Diana was Well, and, and we
had a f- a family that we knew in,
in San Antonio, the de la Parra
Rupert Isaacson: family.
Glenn Cochran: So Maritza and Rafael
Parra were raising Spanish horses also.
And so but they were using Nuno.
They, they had, their kids were being
trained by him and that sort of thing.
So I, I heard Nuno, Nuno, Nuno.
And Diana basically was a very strong
Baucherist and, and taught pretty much
everything the way Nuno taught it.
And so we would, we wo-
rode with her quite a bit.
And so that's where I started doing the
in-hand work with the double bridle.
And then you know, for several years we'd,
we're going over there and coming back.
And one day she calls me up and
she says, "Glenn, I've got a
proposition that you can't refuse."
And I said, "Diana, you'd be- That's,
that's a good accent ... amazed, yeah,
you'd be amazed at what I can refuse."
And she says, "Well, I don't
think you'll refuse this."
That she had a, a, a young horse named
Solitario who was a yearling at the
time, and he was a Regalito's son.
Regalito was the son of Regalado who
was the son of Levitan, who's one
of the Criollo Caballos stallions.
And she said, "I, I don't want to
castrate him, but if he stays here,
he's gonna have to be castrated.
But if you can take him,
I'll make you a trade.
If any time in the next 10 years you can
bring me a gray Peruvian that I can ride."
'Cause she got interested in Peruvians.
So I said, "Well," I
talked to Sally about it.
We decided, let's go over and get him.
We, we were on our way back from picking
the horse up on the 21-mile long Chafallay
Bridge when I blew a tire on the trailer-
Oof ... with a, probably a $20,000
Andalusian stallion in the trailer.
And there's no place to go.
I mean, it's concrete on this
side and concrete on that side.
Trucks are just blaring by.
But this, this young Black I
guess Creole kid comes by, and
I couldn't even understand him.
He says, ". Yeah, whatever."
He changed the tire for me
with the trucks sailing by.
Wow ... and I, and I, and
I said, "You know, I really
appreciate what you've done.
I, I wanna pay you something for this."
He says, "No, no, no.
I can't do.
You, you can't pay me, no, no.
It's my thing.
That's what I do."
So, okay.
So I said, "But I'll tell you what.
I, this is not really repayment, but,
but y- I'd really like to know where
to get some really good boudin."
And he says, "Oh, Henderson-Cecilia,
actually on roadside of the bridge."
You know, I said, "Could you say
that just a little bit slower?"
It turns out on the west side of the
Chafallay Bridge is Henderson one
direction, Cecilia the other direction.
And he said, "If you turn right, there's
a filling station down there that's got
that red boudin, blow your head off."
I says, "That's what I want."
So we got the horse home and I started
him under saddle and, and course I,
you know, kind of still, I, I had a
little bit of knowledge of in-hand
work because of working with her,
and so we, we got things started.
But, Then after that, we had, we've
had a succession of stallions.
We sort of, I guess the, the first one I
was working with Eastern Region Andalusian
Horse Association as their announcer.
That's back in Virginia.
And I would meet these judges
from, from Portugal and from Spain.
Juan Llamas being one of my favorites.
He's a crazy man, but he, he
passed away a few years ago.
But he would actually come stay
at our house and stuff, you know.
He was great.
But he's, he just w- loads of stories.
And so we, we learned a lot from him.
Mostly stories, not so much
horse training, but he's
pretty good at that too.
And well, I found out about the
Portuguese horses, and he, he
started teaching me about the
Rejonel, the bull fighting horses.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
And
Glenn Cochran: it was somewhere along
in there was when, when I found out
about the, the clinics down at Magnolia
at Alas dos Cava- I can't say it.
Alas dos Cavaleros.
Dos Cavalos, yes.
And I'm trying to learn
Portuguese, but it's a struggle.
Anyway that was when we
started working with Manuel.
And it was funny because the first
time we went down there he just had
everybody set lawn chairs out and
he, he just gave a lecture, and then
we started working with the horses.
And I had...
I think it, I think the first, first few
I w- I may have been working with that the
the stallion now being s- somewhat older.
But anyway I said, I punched Sally.
I, I says, "Does this guy
sound like a Spaniard to you?
Name's Manuel Trigo.
That should be Spanish, right?"
And she says...
Well, Sally's never been too good at,
at accents, but I says, "He talks like
he is more likely he is a Frenchman."
"Est-ce que vous voulez en francais?"
And he, he said, "Well, here's the deal.
I was born in Badajoz, Spain, but my
family moved when I was young to the,
to the French canton of Switzerland."
He said, "So I grew up speaking
more French than Spanish."
And sure enough, he, he hi- his
accent is very French, but he, he
can speak Spanish too, and actually
I think he speaks a certain amount
of, of German and, and some English.
His, his his...
I, I tell him, I say, "You know,
you got a slight English accent
to your Spanish sometimes."
But that, but he does the best he
can to explain things, and I've
learned a huge amount from him.
Meanwhile since I was working in the
emergency room over in College Station
this was after I'd done about 20 years
of family practice here at Caldwell.
And I starved out, so I needed
to be able to make a living, so I
started working the emergency room.
Well, the, one of the professors at
the vet school had a guy, a husband
of one of his graduate students.
He says, "You need to meet this guy.
He's just sitting around watching TV,
but he's from Spain and he's a horseman."
And so, you know, I finally consented.
You know, I don't know
how this is gonna go.
So this guy shows up, name is
Fermin Carrera, and Fermin was an
international jumping horse rider up
until he had some kind of an injury.
I never did quite get
straight what that was.
And he said he says "Let's, let's
start to work these horses the way
this old man in Madrid taught me."
And he started working with them,
and I says, "This flexion that
you're doing, is that by any
chance the flexion of Baucher?"
He said, "Exactly."
And so then the books that I'd been
reading, and, and by that time I think
I had Hilda Nelson's book, Fr- Francois
Baucher: The Man and His Method.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Glenn Cochran: So things started kind
of falling into place at that point.
I had, I had the, the Nuno
concept through Diana, and then
Fermin started working with me.
And he would come over on a Wednesday.
We would, we would gather up about
four or five young horses that I was
starting under saddle, 'cause I was
doing that the whole time I was doing
medicine, anytime I had spare time.
And, and then he would say,
"Okay, I'm gonna work the horse
first, but you be right behind me.
Watch everything I'm doing."
And he says, "You'll watch my hands,
watch where my body is, and then when,
when I get to a certain point, then
you're gonna come up and take the
reins and I'm gonna be right behind
you, and we'll work through it."
For about six months he worked first.
We'd work four or five
horses in an afternoon.
I would, I would come along and we would
change positions, and I'd work behind him.
And then finally one day he says,
"Okay, we're gonna change this.
You gonna start first, I follow you."
And so sure enough, I started the, the
in-hand work, and he would make, you
know, he'd make suggestions and stuff,
and then he would work with them.
And what he was doing was testing to
see if I had, was developing lightness.
And I thought, "Ah, okay,
I see you, foxy devil.
I see what you're up to."
And but, but sure enough, you know,
he would say, "Okay, little more
outside rein," or, "You need to, to
push on them with your, with your
elbow or your hand where your leg
is gonna be," this kind of stuff.
And gradually I learned the
feel of, of the of the in-hand
work with the double bridle.
And a lot of people say, "Well,
I want you to teach me that."
I says, "You got about a year?"
Hmm.
'Cause it took me about a year to
really kinda get the hang of it,
and then every year since, and that
would've been, shoot, when was that?
That was probably, like,
in the 1990s sometime.
Every year since then I've learned
another little bit of this and another
little bit- Yeah ... of that, you know?
And so y- you're always improving.
I don't think I'll ever
get- Yeah, the nuances
Rupert Isaacson: never,
never, never cease.
Yeah ... you get around one bend and
there's another bend waiting for you.
That's it.
Glenn Cochran: That's it.
Yeah.
Like a mountain road.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So,
Glenn Cochran: and meanwhile, all
during this time I'm going and, and
day working with the various ranchers
and neighbors wherever we were living.
I day worked in all over Texas and the
Panhandle and New Mexico and Colorado.
For those, for
Rupert Isaacson: people who are not
cowboy savvy, what does day working mean?
Glenn Cochran: Day working means that
you go to work for a rancher usually if
he's trying to round up and work a bunch
of cattle, and they all do it different.
It's amazing the, the geographical
difference in clothing, the way
the horses are rigged up, the way
they work the cattle, you know,
whether they have pens or not.
There was one place up in the Panhandle
I worked, we pushed about 350 head of
pairs up into a corner of a fence, you
know, like a six wire barbed wire fence,
with one little bitty extension of, of
fence coming out the side, and there
was about seven or eight guys sitting
on their horses holding these cattle up.
And then we started sorting the cattle
out, leaving more calves and only
a few few cows kind of as nurses.
And then, then the roping started.
The rope and drag out, of course at,
at that outfit I, I got off my horse
and I became one of the ground crew.
So then ground crew, the guy comes out
dragging the calf by its hind legs.
You have to grab the calf, get it
on the ground, get the people on top
of it, throw his rope back to him.
This guy was so fast that if you didn't
get that rope off in time, he'd start
dragging a calf back into the herd.
His name was Buddy Lowery, and he was,
he was one of the old cowboys from
back in the Cowboy Turtle Association
back in the early rodeo days.
So he was pretty slick with that rope.
But as, as luck would have it he found
out I was a doctor and so he says,
"Okay your job on the ground crew
is you're gonna be the castrator."
So, so I was, I was doing surgery.
But they would feed us, and, and course
before you get started doing the cow
work, you, you, you cover probably several
thousand acres horseback gathering these
cattle out of these hills and so forth.
Yeah.
And and so that was pretty good.
And and then I worked some in,
in New Mexico, mostly around
Clovis out in the flat country.
Mm-hmm.
And, Yeah ... and then up in
Colorado up in the mountains.
We were, we, where we lived in the
mountains in Colorado was on the
western slope, and the, there you
had to get the cattle out of the
mountains by the 15th of October,
'cause that's when elk season started.
So we're up in these c- terrifying
mountains, pushing these cattle
out and and sometimes you
ended up in a snowstorm too.
It wasn't that unusual.
If y- by October it's usually
getting pretty snowy up there.
But it was fun.
I had a good time, and I was young
enough that I could tolerate the
cold weather and all that stuff.
Rupert Isaacson: Let me ask you a
question about that kind of day working.
So you're a working doctor- Yes ... you've
got your own cattle ranch, you've
got family, and you're learning,
you're s- and you're colt starting.
Right.
So how do you possibly have the time
to drive up to the Panhandle, which
is, you know, a day's drive away or
wherever, and cowboy for somebody else?
That's question one.
Question two is, is that a paid gig, and
how, how do those jobs come your way?
Like, is it some sort
of interesting network?
Like, I'd, I'd be fascinated to know that.
So the first thing, how did you find the
time with everything you had going on?
And second- Well, yeah ... is
it paid or how is it organized?
Glenn Cochran: The, the time thing was
I just had to take time off, you know?
I and sometimes there was a lot
of resistance to that, 'cause the
partners in my, my practice felt
like every time I took time off,
that was taking time away from them.
Of course, never mind they
would take two weeks to go to
Europe or something, you know?
But but anyway, so you
just take time off and go.
Yeah.
And then I would usually drive a
truck and a two-horse trailer and
sail on up up to the Panhandle.
It'd take me all in one day to get there.
Sure.
And the connection was I had friends
ranchers and cowboys around here or
wherever we were living, you know,
I'd, I'd just gravitated to 'em.
I, I couldn't- Mm-hmm ... help myself.
And so they, they would say, "Well, you
know, you like to work cows, don't you?"
And I said, "Yeah."
"Well, we, we're gonna be
working this weekend up here.
Why don't you come on up?"
And one time this is when I was in
Greeley, Colorado, working, I was
doing my family practice residency.
One of the nurses said, "We're gonna
be moving some cattle some horses, I
mean, up to fish camp up in Estes Park.
You wanna come along?"
And course the answer was yes, and
so Sally and I both went up there.
We met at, I think it was Loveland,
and they have, they had truckloads
of horses that they brought in
from Briggsdale out in the plains.
They unload all these horses and
some of them were, were already
broke, so we were supposed to bring
our saddles and bridles and stuff.
Sally got a pretty nice well-broke
mare that she was riding and, and he
says, "You know, you, you act like
you kinda know a little bit about
riding some of these younger horses."
And I was trying to, trying
to stay covered up , you know,
but he, he figured me out.
He says, "We got one here that he's kinda
green, but I think you can handle him.
He's, he's a hackamore colt."
Well, I just happened to have my hackamore
along, so I got him all rigged up and
spun him around a few times and got
him where he was not thinking about
bucking so much and, and off we went.
It was 66 head of horses, and we went
up through the hills, the foothills
of the Rockies and on up, and
eventually got up into, to Estes Park.
But on the way up there we saw things
you would never see from the road.
You know, we went through one rancher's
place and, and he came out on his
horse and visited with us and stuff.
So we get to the, to the highway
that goes into Estes Park.
I forget what the number is, but
we're going, you're kinda, at that
point, you're kinda coming downhill
and it's a fairly narrow highway
and the, the, the hill rises up on
one side pretty steep, and then it
kinda slopes off on the other side.
And, and when we came into it, we're
coming down the hill and then back up off
on the road and, and we had to run these
horses right down the highway 'cause there
wasn't any place else for them to go.
Well, of course that stopped traffic.
And the neat thing was the, the kids,
you know, they see this line of horses
going down and there was, I don't know,
seven or eight or nine of us riding,
and the kids, "Oh look, Mom, cowboys.
Real cowboys."
Kind of an ego trip there.
You kind of ride a little higher,
you know, "Yeah, I'm a real cowboy."
And then so this one guy was driving
what, some real fancy European
car, and he was just cussing
us, I mean, just letting it go.
And one of the horses went by
and kicked out his headlight,
and we all just kinda turned our
heads and just rode on, you know.
He's, he's still cussing and fuming,
but the traffic is stopped, so
there's nothing he can do about it.
And, and we just rode on and
took the horses up to the camp.
But after that everybody, we were
sitting around and everybody said,
"Wonder, wonder if that guy ever
figured out who the hell we were."
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
You hope at that point that your business
card doesn't accidentally fall out of
your back pocket or something like that.
Yeah.
Ah.
Yeah
I-
interestingly, you, you had this medical
life going on parallel with all this.
I presume a- along with your passion for
horses and for cowboying, you probably
have a passion for medicine, right?
Otherwise, you wouldn't have stuck
with it- Yeah ... and done it.
It was- Talk, talk to us about that, and
talk about the parallels between- Okay
that and your horsemanship life,
apart from castrating cows.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
Well, the parallels are, are pretty good,
because what I really was interested in
from very early on was biology and art.
In fact, I really thought I was gonna
be a medical illustrator for a while.
Okay.
Some of my, m- but most of my pictures
that I drew on the, on the the,
the, the sides of all of my papers
in school were horses, of course.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: But I loved to draw,
and so I loved to draw horses, 'cause
I loved horses, and I loved biology.
And being an only child after school,
before I started my homework, I was
usually out in the woods someplace.
So I- Mm ... I, I ended up having a
fairly feral upbringing, you know?
But, but being out in the woods and
watching animals and plants and all
that kind of stuff, that was, that was
pretty much where my fascination was.
So naturally, when I went off to
college, I got a degree in biology.
You know, the the college I went to
was Baylor, which is up in Waco, Texas.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes, I know that one.
And
Glenn Cochran: so, the biology
degree then was pretty natural
pre-med type of a, of a degree.
But that actually went
further back than that.
My grandmother, who had worked in
that hospital that I was born in
back up there in Indiana she wasn't
a nurse, but she was, like, an
admitting clerk or something like that.
With an eighth-grade education, coming
from a German family, you know, she,
she still, you know, when we were d-
doing something in the house, if you
made a sound she didn't understand,
she, she says, "Was ist los?"
Or if you ask her a question-
Mm ... she didn't know the
answer, she's, "Ich weià nicht."
You know?
Yeah.
So it's like, you know, she was
still German and English were
kinda interchangeable to her.
And I, and I've, years later
I finally figured out why she,
when she moved to Florida, she
couldn't say the R in Florida.
And I said, "Well, that's,
that's the German accent."
She, she said, "R is not a letter that
you pronounce in German very often," so.
But anyway where was I?
So- Medicine ... so, she was the one
that wanted me to be a doctor, and I,
when I was five years old, for Christmas
I got a, a little cardboard box.
It was a little country
doctor kit, you know?
And I, and I was kinda interested
in that, but then the main thing I
thought about doctors was they were
gonna stick you with a needle, and
I wasn't too interested in that, so.
But as I went along, I found out that
there was quite a connection between
all this biology that I was interested
in and, and the concept of healing And
I wasn't old enough to realize that you
had to heal from anything, 'cause when
I got sick I got well anyway, you know.
But but during my time in college of
course you start reading different things.
I read a lot of Anton Chekhov and all
that sort of stuff, and, and found out...
And of course Baylor is a, is a, is
a Baptist school, so I had to take
a lot of religion courses, so we
studied biblical stuff and all that.
And the, you know, the doctor and
the healing and all that was kind
of floating around in my head, so my
roommate and I both applied to medical
school as, as juniors, and we both
got accepted at Baylor in Houston.
And so, of course the, the...
And we, we were studying night and day.
I mean, that's all we did was study.
Or of course most of my classes
were in the biology department,
so we were out doing field trips,
catching frogs and snakes and
fish and, you know, categorizing
plants and all that kind of stuff.
And so that, that suited me just fine.
You know, not being in the classroom and
being out there in the, in the swamps
and near Waco was just fine with me.
But we we thought, you know, we really
wanted to get into medical school.
And, and as time went on in medical
school, I began to realize, you know,
there's a lot of different things
about medicine, but the thing that
made the most sense to me was, was what
the new specialty of family practice.
'Cause there you're just working
with the people that you live with.
And and my mom was one of those kind of
people that she was always working with
the people that we lived with anyway.
She had a, a degree in, a
master's degree in psychology.
Of course her, her main thing out of
college was she was a combined French and
mathematics major, so she spoke French and
she could do, like, differential calculus,
which she helped my dad later on write his
book about nuclear fuel cells and stuff.
So she was a pretty unusual lady, but
she spent a lot of time talking to
other faculty wives and stuff like
that, and she would, you know, have
tea with them and just sit and talk.
And a lot of them had all kinds of
psychological problems, and she was a
good listener and, and an active listener.
She could ask questions and she could
talk to them and then get them going,
and then she would listen to them.
And she was one of those kind of
people that her, her b- she, she had
been Catholic as a child, and her
belief system was you know, Jesus
says love one another, and that was...
You know, her religion was
pretty simple, actually.
And interestingly enough-
Her mother was a converso.
She, she had been Catholic be- she had
been Jewish before she became Catholic.
Her mother?
Yeah.
So, so actually- In Spain.
Yeah.
Ge- genetically, I'm Jewish.
So, so she...
Rupert Isaacson: Jewish
from which tradition?
From- Her, mostly Ashkenazi, I think.
They- Ashkenazi.
So Eastern Europe.
Yeah, in, in, Yeah.
Okay.
They- That's my, that's
my father's family, too.
We're Ashkenazi.
I, I- Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: I, I kind of figured.
Scottish on one side,
Rupert Isaacson: Ashkenazi on
Glenn Cochran: the other.
Yeah, the, the, the...
I know very little about that
because she suppressed that.
She, she wouldn't talk about it,
and s- and my grandmother died,
I think I was two when I died.
I barely remember her, but she became,
like, super Catholic, you know?
But- Yeah ... but I've read some of
her letters later on that, that she
wrote to my mom and, and the, the
tone of those letters, this would
be turn- during, like, the last 10
years of her life, the, the guilt
trip that she would load on my mother.
I said, "Okay, I get it," you know?
There, there might be a question
in somebody's mind about whether
she was Jewish or not until you
read those letters, and then you
know for damn sure she was Jewish.
But anyway so, so that was my
mom's religious background.
Her, her father actually was Irish
Catholic, so that, that makes
a real interesting combination.
Yeah, it does.
Yeah.
Particularly when you start thinking about
healing and stuff like that, you know.
You got a very spiritualistic
type of tradition in there.
And I was, you know, shit, I was
in my 50s before I even started
thinking about stuff like that.
But that was inter- well, my dad,
his family had been Protestant,
and they got married during the war
dur- with the justice of the peace.
So after the war was over, then
Dad says to Mom, says, "Well, I
guess we need to start going to
church now that we're married."
And he, he says, "Where do
you reckon we're gonna go?"
And she says, "Well,
St Mary's, of course."
He says, "Well, St Mary's
is a Catholic church."
He was a 33rd degree Mason.
Look at that.
Whoa.
So, so- That's a hoot, yeah ... Mom
said, "Well, let me, let
me ask you a question, Bob.
You came to my house.
There were seven kids and two adults.
There was a cross up on the wall of the
kitchen, and we ate at a picnic table.
And when we got done praying,
we did this, all of us.
What about that didn't tell
you that I was Catholic?"
But he didn't know.
I mean, he just didn't
have anything to go from.
So anyway, we ended up being
Methodist most of the time growing up.
But my cousins, some of them were
Catholic, and so I would go to
the Catholic church part of the
time, and I'd go to the Lutheran
church part of the time, and then
I'd go to a Methodist church.
So, I, I got pretty ecumenical,
if you wanna use that term.
Mm-hmm.
And I've kinda carried that concept
of ecumenical into the horse world-
Okay ... where it's okay to be
a cowboy, but it's also okay to
ride classical stuff, you know?
I hear
Rupert Isaacson: you.
Interesting.
Glenn Cochran: And the,
it all fits together.
You know, it's all one thing.
Just like people, we're all one thing.
We are one DNA, therefore there is
no such thing as races or anything.
We're all one.
And so anyway, that, that,
that all kind of fit together.
And the the, the medical part,
I was I was introduced to a guy
named William, or the concepts.
He was in, he was back in the
1800s, a guy named William Osler.
And William Osler's style, he was British
I think, and his style of medicine was
to, to sit down on the patient's bed,
get the patient started talking, let the
patient tell you what their problem is.
He says, "If you, if you spend enough time
with them, they'll tell you the diagnosis.
You don't have to wonder what it is.
You don't need a lab test, x-rays.
They'll tell you what's wrong
with them if you just listen."
And sure enough that was the way
I chose to practice medicine.
And I remember I had started
working in the emergency rooms.
One of the radiologists who was
reading the x-rays down at Belleville,
which is about 45 minutes south
of here, called me up one day.
He says, "Cochran, you need
to be working in Belleville."
I said, "Well, why do I need
to be working in Belleville?"
He says, "'Cause there's nothing
but a bunch of dumbasses down there.
All they do is do x-rays and lab.
They don't know anything, and
they all order CAT scans on
everybody w- comes in the door."
He says, "You order an x-ray
when you need an x-ray.
You order a lab test
when you need a lab test.
Otherwise, you practice medicine,
and we need somebody like that
down there in Belleville."
And so you know, I, I thought he was just
flattering me, but then the more, the
longer I was there, the more I realized
that what he said was exactly right.
You know, these guys had a formula.
You walk in the door, you order
everything you know how to order
about whatever that chief complaint
was before you ever even see the
patient, and I never would do that.
I'd say, "Well, let me go meet them."
You know, nurse would say, "Well, we
need to know, we need some orders."
I'd say, "You're gonna get your
orders when I get done visiting with
them, but I wanna visit with them.
I wanna know who they are.
I wanna know, you know, how
they think and what's going on."
And more often than not, I came
out of the room and they'd say,
"Well, what do you wanna order?"
I'd say, "I don't need anything.
I just need you to give
this one a penicillin shot."
Mm-hmm.
And it's, it's not that
I'm such a great guy.
What it is, it's the concept, the
concept of Oslerian medicine, and
boy, do we need that to come back now.
I guess part of the reason why I'm
not practicing medicine anymore,
part of it was the COVID epidemic.
It was 2020 and I was covering up,
you know, mask and gown and washing
my hands 50 times a day and all that,
and I was doing 24-hour shifts, and I
was thinking, you know, shit, I'm...
What was it?
I was s- 75 years old at that
time, and I said, "You know,
I'm at risk for this stuff.
If I get sick, I'm gonna die, and I
don't really, I'm not quite ready yet.
I've got more horse training
I wanna learn how to do."
And so I just, I told them, "Don't
sch-" It was August of 2020.
I just said, "Just don't schedule me
for September and I'll think about it."
Never went back.
But the other thing that was, was
on my mind was so much of, of what
was going on was, like, when in
the hell did the medical profession
become the medical business?
'Cause it was never about money for
me and, and I just, I just had it.
You know, I couldn't stand that anymore.
And I, I couldn't change
it, but I could change me.
And so now I practice medicine
on cowboys and my friends.
You know, I, I don't, I don't
do lab tests or anything.
I just sit and listen to them, and
I make suggestions, and I tell them
who they ought to go to over in Bryan
to go see about that, and I tell
them what I think maybe is going on.
And they appreciate the
fact- I've, I've just
Rupert Isaacson: been, as you've
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This is...
You, I'm so glad you,
you mentioned this, man.
So Oslerian medicine,
I, I, I looked it up.
Yeah.
And I just want to read this for the
people who are listening and- Good
... watching, 'cause I think everyone,
I think this is really interesting.
Oslerian medicine is a patient-centered
humanistic approach to healthcare
established by Sir William Osler, 1849
to 1919, emphasizing bedside teaching,
compassionate care, and scientific rigor.
It promotes learning through
direct patient interaction, ward
medicine, rather than just lectures,
cultivating professionalism,
ethics, and a love for people.
Key principles of Oslerian medicine
include bedside teaching, shifting
medical education from classrooms to
hospital wards, where students learn by
observing and examining patients directly.
Humanism and compassion, focusing
on treating the patient as an
individual, not just the disease.
Listen to the patient, a core philosophy
advocating that attentive listening to the
patient's history leads to the diagnosis.
Lifelong learning, emphasizing that
medicine is a rigorous science requiring
continuous study and observation, and
equanimity, cultivating a calm demeanor,
imperturbability, in the face of a crisis.
Wow, and there's the McGovern
Academy of Oslerian Medicine- at the
University of Texas Medical Branch.
Ooh, ooh.
I, this, this is wonderful.
And it's interesting because I, I
have a lot of medicine in my family,
but I have never heard of this.
But it's interesting growing up
in the UK- Yeah ... that idea of
learning on the wards, that is of
course now the standard, isn't it?
That must have come from him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: But we're
not told these things.
And, and his book, the title of his book
is Aequanimitas, spelled with the, the
Greek spelling, A-E for the first part.
Aequanimitas.
And that was the whole thing is, is just
take, take all the, the hubbub out of it.
Just settle down and just go down
to, you know, you got a person there
in front of you, learn that person.
Okay.
And that...
and, and the compassion
is such a huge part of it.
You know, there's, there's...
it's not about, "Oh, yeah,
I'm gonna go take out the, the
appendix in room three," you know?
No, it was, it was George Smith who
happens to have a problem with his
appendix, and it looks like the only
thing we can do is surgery and take
it out, so I'll go explain to George
why he needs to be put asleep and
have the surgery, and I'll help him
understa- you know, that kind of thing.
Mm-hmm.
And so, you know, it, it's, it's not that
sterile hands-off kind of thing at all.
It's a very hands-on...
And in fact, my, the director of
my residency, this is kind of an
aside, it's not really a bunny trail
though the his name was David Bates.
He had been in family practice in
Greeley for a long time, and he
became the director of our residency.
And he says, "When you go in
to see a patient," he says,
"you have to touch them.
And not just on their shoulder or on
their sleeve, you have to touch them on
bare skin with your bare skin, because
that makes a connection that's real,
and you have to make that connection."
And he actually, to him it was almost
like it was what, what they now refer
to as, as the aura, you know, the, the
electromagnetic field around a human
being, which is pretty close to Reiki,
actually, when you come right down to it.
Mm.
And so which then brings me to
something in horses that I've found,
is Jim Masterson now uses basically
Reiki to- Mm ... to calm horses.
You know, the, the bladder meridian.
And boy, I'm using- Mm ... the
heck out of that these days.
You know, you...
in fact I've, I have not worked
with him, but Kate, my friend,
is, is actually certified by him.
She actually took her finals
with Jim Masterson himself.
But I've watched some of his videos
and I've listened to what she
describes, and it's just amazing.
I mean, the s- the stuff that you
see these horses do, you think,
you know, "Who in the world?
How could I ever have not known that if
you put your hand up over this horse's
neck at a certain place and their,
their eyes start to blink, and then you
just leave your hand there-" Then it
might be a while, might be a couple of
minutes, and then their head drops to
the ground, they blow out, they start
to yawn, and, and, and chew and lick
and it's like, wow, what happened?
Well, their, their brain just
finally calmed down and they
went into a parasympathetic state
rather than the fight or flight.
And man, you know, you- if, if you
think about you're dealing with an
animal that's 10 times as big as
you are, 10 times as strong as you
are, and three times as quick as you
are, you think you're gonna get that
done b- with your piddly strength?
You, you better be using
that thing up under that hat.
'Cause the only thing about you that's
bigger than that horse is your brain.
Rupert Isaacson: And the
heart, what's under your shirt.
You know, w- it's really
interesting what- Yes, right.
That's right ... you know, y- your,
what you've talked about with your,
your, your resident in Greeley and him
talking about the skin-to-skin touch.
So of course, as you know in my world
when I'm working with autism and trauma
and all the other ways in which we use
horses in, that's how I got into dressage
in the first place- Yeah ... what is
to do with oxytocin and the creation
of oxytocin, and there is no better
way to create oxytocin human-to-human
than direct touch of the skin because
that's the baby on the mother's
breast, that's the, you know- Yeah
now, most of the time this is obviously
for reasons that are too obvious,
you know, to go into not possible
human-to-human most of the time.
So it's very, very interesting,
apart from perhaps a handshake.
So it's, and that's perhaps why
a handshake is so important- Yeah
... because you do feel the person, you
create the connection because if it
goes well, you're creating oxytocin.
If the guy crushes your hand,
you're creating cortisol, and you
know- ... to go the other way.
It's like, well, if you feel you've
got to crush my hand, what else
are you gonna try and crush, right?
Yeah ... or, or, or you feel that
there's, they're not making a connection
with you at all, the hand is so limp.
Yeah.
Feel that they're not- No, you,
Glenn Cochran: you go on about that
all you want to, 'cause as far as I'm
concerned, that may be why we're here.
Yeah.
Whether it's people or
horses or lizards, you know?
I, I think that's, that's at the root of
why we're here is to make the connection.
And somebody said "Do you
teach horses collection?"
I says, "Well, I suppose, but
really what I'm trying to do
is teach them connection."
Mm.
I wanna, I want them to know me-
And I wanna know them, you know?
Mm-hmm.
I want us to, to have a, a communication
that's meaningful and, and it's not
just a, "Okay, he's a two-legged."
No, he's, he's a two-legged
named Glen and he cares about me,
and he shows me that every day.
Mm-hmm.
And that's, that's where...
Whoops, knocked my phone down.
That's where the, the, the connection
between medicine and horse training is,
is, you know, there is no difference.
You know, we're doing the same thing.
Well- And then when, when I'm working-
Got it ... with students, you know,
it's like, you know, I, I got a student
who's trying to learn how to ride.
They think all they're here for is
learn how to, you know, equitation.
And, and I don't start there.
I start, "Okay, let's walk out here with
this horse on a, on a lead line and s-
stand out here for a while and, and let's
think about, you know, who that horse is.
How are they responding to you?
What are they doing?
What are they- Mm-hmm ... are they
standing with their head up in the air and
their tail up in the air or is their head
down low, are they licking and chewing?"
All that stuff that Ray Hunt came up with.
You know, it was all- Mm-hmm ... all
about is that horse with
you, and are they relaxed?
And, and then you use that on people.
You know, you watch the student.
Is that student checked out?
Or, or, are they wanting to know the
next thing I have to say, you know?
Mm-hmm.
That kind of stuff.
Rupert Isaacson: Or are they afraid of me?
And then- Yeah, or they're afraid-
Yeah ... of something else.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
You know, it's, it's so interesting
that since I started reading
all the old dead dudes i.e.
the old masters and particularly since
teaming up with Richard Williams, you
know, who's the publisher at Xenophon-
Yeah ... God bless him, because he's,
he's not gonna get rich doing that,
and he's making these incredible
he's, he's like the walking Library
of Alexandria for us, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah.
If that man goes- Yeah ... you
know, say goodbye to, you know,
to 6,000 years of, you know-
Yeah ... human-equestrian endeavor.
So, you know, we owe that man a lot.
But he, since I've really started
studying those texts, the, the, the,
the thing which you notice is the,
the skein, the line that runs through
all of these the, the, the people that
felt that they were gonna write a book
about it through the centuries, is it's
always connected to the humanities.
You, you look at Xenophon and of
course the horsey people who know
Xenophon know him as a horseman.
But actually, the, if you go and study
philosophy at university, you'll know
him as a philosopher because he, he
was a student of Socrates and he was-
Yeah ... class, the same class as Plato.
And they were also all military men
because they had to be, because when
you grew up in those warring you
know, Greek city states, everyone
was drafted into the local militia.
So you were of- often fighting
in the summer and no matter
what your profession was.
And so h- he's, he's a wealthy
aristocrat so he's in the cavalry, but
he is unhorsed- at a particular battle
with the northern neighbors thieves.
And it's, it's Socrates who carries
him off the battlefield, you know?
Mm.
And, and then, you know, so we think
about these guys as living in an ivory
tower, completely removed from everything.
Not at all.
And then he learns his horsemanship
really working as a mercenary in Persia.
Yeah, yeah ... and then he
has to get- He makes the long
Glenn Cochran: trip down through
Turkey into, or Armenia or- He does,
' Rupert Isaacson: cause, 'cause he fights
on the wrong side, and they end up losing
the battle at, near Baghdad, and they
gotta get home from Iraq to Greece walking
with the Persian army on their heels.
So if you go to West Point or you go
to Sandhurst Military Academy in the
UK, you're gonna learn him as the
master of the tactical withdrawal.
Yeah.
But then he's writing all these other
books, horsemanship, husbandry, how
to run your household, philosophy.
He, you know, how you've gotta
actually be nice to your wife
because, of course, that wasn't a given.
And, and how you should
actually listen to your kids.
That wasn't a given.
Back then.
It, and then also how
you, the spiritual side.
So for him, he, he's, he's quite pious
about always making the right sacrifices,
always honoring the gods, you know.
And if you think about the risks
involved in his life the idea of
the relationship with the divine,
it's, it's always in there.
Yeah.
And then, you know, you jump ahead to
writers like Pluvinel, you know, in
the, when the Renaissance is giving way
to the to the Baroque period, and he
has noticed down in these academies in
Italy that the thing that you really
get out of learning to train a horse in
this kind of three-dimensional complex
way is you have to learn to master your
emotions, and that this is actually
perfect training for someone who's going
to be a diplomat and a courtier- Yeah
not just a warrior.
And so then- Yeah, yeah ... all these,
all these riding academies start where
people also learn mathematics, dancing,
astronomy, fencing, languages, you know.
So what I notice, and you, you're,
you're su- you're such a, a living
embodiment of this, is that the
people- Thank you ... that really get
into this type of horse training have
this kind of pan curiosity, but it
always comes down to the humanities.
It always comes down to really
the relationship with your
fellow human, I think, you know.
And, and the horse can
be a funnel for this.
And yes, we want to really connect with
our horses and so on, but we're still
doing this as a human community, as
a horse tribe, you know what I mean?
And it's-
Glenn Cochran: Yeah, yeah
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah ... but someone
could look at you, you know, you wandering
your cowboy hat, kind of talking like
that, and they'd say, "Oh, well, you
know, Glen's a cowboy from Texas."
You wouldn't necessarily
introduce yourself as a doctor.
You wouldn't necessarily introduce
yourself as a doctor of this
particular kind of medicine.
You wouldn't necessarily
introduce yourself as a biologist.
You wouldn't necessarily introduce
yourself as a student of, you
know, both the French, Portuguese
classical tradition and the, you
know, other classical traditions,
the, the Rejonero classical tradition.
You wouldn't, you wouldn't wear
that on your sleeve, but if someone
was to spend a beer with you y- y-
it would very soon become clear.
And, but what is also lovely is that
you totally swim in all those worlds.
You're not then going up saying,
"Well, I'm not gonna go hang up-
hang out with the cowboys in the
Panhandle and do the calf roping and
the castrating, because that's redneck
and I'm too highfalutin for that."
That- that's red and I'm blue or whatever.
What I love about the people that
really get involved in this is that
they swim in all worlds, you know?
There- there's no snobbery,
there's no disconnection.
What you said, I want to teach my horse
connection, it- that is connection.
It's also connection across
the human tribes, too.
Yeah.
But through, through
different horse tribes.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
It's- It's it's one of those things
that, that you, you sometimes don't
realize you're speaking the same language
with somebody in, in the horse world.
And- and what I get a lot of times since
I've, I've been kind of competing a
little bit and working the equitation
is that, that the first thing they
see is the hat, and so then they,
they make assumptions about that.
And so then- Well, it's a natural costume.
It's like a kilt, you know?
I mean, it's- Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I've, I've been known to wear one of
those, too- Yeah ... being a Cochrane.
Yeah.
But, but then it's like, well,
why are you asking your horse
all that stuff with your reins?
And then he starts to chew and lick
and bend his head around and all that.
I say, "Well," and- and then they
start realizing, oh, even cowboys
can do Bushwackerist equitation.
Say, "Yeah, even cowboys."
And it, it's so interesting We- it's, it's
like that one lady that, that told a joke.
She says, "You know, my, my
daughter asked me one day," she
says "Mama are cowboys human?"
Do, do they eat grass?
Like, like cows do?
And she says, "No, no, they are
human, but they don't eat grass."
Well, the, e-
Rupert Isaacson: except in the
states where it's legal, yeah.
Glenn Cochran: Well, then they
smoke it instead of eat it, yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Well,
there's edibles now,
Glenn Cochran: yeah, yeah.
Yeah, so c- do cowboys eat grass?
No, dear- Try ... they're part human.
Rupert Isaacson: Only part human, yeah.
Yeah.
That, you could argue that
they drink grass, because what
is beer but fermented barley?
And what is- That's
right ... barley but a grass?
Yeah, so yeah, I guess-
And- Yeah ... and bread.
Glenn Cochran: Bread's- And
some bread ... the same thing.
Exactly.
Especially sourdough bread.
Since I've gotten into the chuck
wagon cooking stuff a little bit, you
know, I make sourdough bread a lot.
And and the, there's like this one
old he was a rabbi actually, and
he said, "You know, beer is liquid
bread, and bread is solid beer.
They're both fermented wheat."
And, and I say, you know, never
quite thought of it that way.
If,
Rupert Isaacson: if only you could get
quite the same buzz off bread, but yes.
Te- tell me about what, what,
the chuck wagon cooking.
I didn't know that side of you.
What, what are you doing with that?
Glenn Cochran: Well, my, my
son actually got me into it.
We were, there's a big antique
show in I guess it's twice a year,
mostly it's in April, down in a
place called Round Top, Texas.
Rupert Isaacson: I know the Round
Top, Texas, Okay ... antique.
Fe- fe- it's bananas.
It's-
Glenn Cochran: Oh,
Rupert Isaacson: it's
amazing ... thousands and
Glenn Cochran: thousands of people.
Yeah, yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: So, of course my, my
wife and her friends wanted to go
down there, so we went down there.
And, and my son at the time, I think,
I can't remember how old he was, he
was late teenager I guess he's in
his 50s now so it's a while back.
But we come to this place,
this guy's got chuck wagons.
And and, and all the stuff, you know,
the, the, the iron pots and everything.
Well, I, when I was in the Boy Scouts
we had learned how to cook with a,
a Dutch oven, you know, so I knew a
little bit of something about that.
And we always liked to camp a bunch,
you know, that's, that's another
part of cowboy- And explain- Yeah
explain to
Rupert Isaacson: people who
might not know what a Dutch
oven is, what a Dutch oven is.
Okay.
Glenn Cochran: Dutch oven is basically
a, a large iron pot with feet on it,
and then it's got a lid that actually
has a lip so that what you can do
is you can put the coals on the top
of the oven when you put the lid on.
So you have heat coming from the top,
and then you got the heat underneath
because you got these feet that
it's standing up off the ground.
So you put coals top and bottom,
and then you can put whatever
you're cooking in there.
You can either put it directly in the
pot- And, and these things are heavy too.
I mean, they're thick thick walled iron.
And the...
Or you can put the, the food in
there in, in a container, like a,
a pie pan or something and, and
set it on some rocks where it's not
actually in contact with the bottom.
And but you, you regulate the heat of
the thing by basically how many coals you
put on the top versus how many coals you
put on the bottom, which is fine until
the wind's blowing 30 miles an hour.
Now, that does two things.
One, it carries the heat away from
the, the oven, but at the same time it
fans the coals and makes them hotter.
So, so trying to m- to regulate the
heat on a Dutch oven is a real art form.
But my son and my grandson now all think
that's one of the neatest things in the
world, is cooking with a Dutch oven.
So we, we ended up, we ended up
buying one of the wagons that was
down there at, at you know, Round Top,
and it was just, it was just a wagon.
It had a box on it but they
had rigged up a set of brakes
and a, and a tongue, so it...
When we, when we found the
wagon, it was actually drivable.
And but the wheels are pretty ancient.
I mean, this thing was probably
made in the 1840s or '50s,
somewhere along in there.
It was a grain wagon at first,
and then it got converted to, to
being having a chuck box on it.
And so now we, we got the bows to
put the wagon sheet on it, and we
bought all kinds of jew jaws and
stuff to, to, you know, to add to it.
Saws and axes and, you know, plates
and all that stuff, you know.
Flour cans and what have you.
So, we could actually probably go do
chuck wagon competitions, but I just
don't have that much interest in that.
But what we use it- So where do you,
Rupert Isaacson: where do you
do this chuck wagon cooking?
Like, do, do you take it
to events and- Well, we, we
Glenn Cochran: when we round up
cattle on our place, we, we'll pull
the chuck wagon out to wherever we're
working the cattle and and set it up.
And I have driven horses in
the past, so I've got a bunch
of harness I can hang on it.
I don't currently have any mules or
horses that I can use to actually drive
the wagon, and I would probably have
to rebuild the wheels before I did it.
Mm.
But it's just, it's a, it's
kind of a backdrop, if you will.
Nice.
And then we'll, we will serve the,
the noon meal out of the wagon.
We have our little dining flies and stuff,
and so people come up, and we might, might
have cabrito or stew or green chili stew.
There's no telling, you know.
Something different every time.
And so we all like to cook, and so we'll
get together and cook up a bunch of stuff,
and, and it's, it's pretty, pretty pretty
Mexican type cooking for the most part.
Mm.
But then that fits in with West
Texas, you know, which is, that's
Rupert Isaacson: where we
are, you know, so Yeah.
Tell...
And tell me how, where does
the sourdough come into that?
Glenn Cochran: Well, in order to,
to have bread, there's several
different things you can have.
You can make cornbread- Mm-hmm ... you can
make that in a Dutch oven, or you can make
tortillas- Mm ... or what they call pan
de campo, which is like a, a real thick
tortilla, or you can make sourdough bread.
But the trick with sourdough bread
is you have to have your starter,
you have to keep it going, and then,
then you make the, the the bread
up, and you put the starter put, put
the, the, the dough, once you get it
made up, you put it someplace to sit.
And it, it might be a few hours,
it might be a couple of days.
You never know.
It's just, it takes its own time.
But that's one of the things that
the chuck wagon competition stuff is
they, they want they wanna know can
you handle a sourdough starter and
can you, can you make sourdough bread.
And so it's, it's a kind of, it's
more of an art form than anything.
And but now what I mostly use it
for is my, my family likes for me to
make them some sourdough bread fairly
regularly, so at least once a week
if not more often, I'm, I'm in there
making up another batch of sourdough.
And, and it's, you know, you talk
about meditation and rituals, making
sourdough is a meditation and a ritual.
You know, you gotta kinda have your mind
on what you're doing, and, and you're
just sort of, sort of going through
a process, but you're feeling what's
happening with that dough the whole time.
And, and you can tell when it's working
and when it's not, that kinda thing.
So it, it gives you some time
out, 'cause you really can't do
anything else with all this flour
on your hands, except make bread.
So, and then you have to wait for it,
you know, say, "Are you ready yet?"
And then, "No."
So you wait another day,
and then you bake it.
How do you know when it's ready?
The, the, the, the main measurement
that most people use is if it's in
a, if it's in the the rising state,
whatever vessel you've got it in, if
it's one and a half to two times more
of it there than when you put it, and
I usually put it in a refrigerator
to, to ferment so it goes slower,
'cause you get more flavor that way.
So if it's one and a half to two times and
then you, you poke it, and if, if you poke
it in and it comes back out kind of, you
know, fairly quickly, then you know that
there's carbon dioxide bubbles in there.
And you know when you put that in
the oven at 450 degrees, that's gonna
give you oven spring, and you get a,
a, a kind of a round loaf of bread.
Not all my experiments are perfect,
and sometimes I get a doorstop and
sometimes I get a real nice light loaf
of bread, but it, it all eats, so...
Rupert Isaacson: Fascinating.
And, and that's really
chemistry, isn't it?
It's chemistry- Yeah ... and
biology together.
Yeah ... and of course
that's- Yeah, you make...
Glenn Cochran: Yeah, as a
matter of fact, the, the, the
fermentation, it's just like wine.
You know, you, the fermentation
makes alcohol and carbon dioxide.
If you make too much alcohol,
that kills the, the, the
yeast, and so then you're done.
You know?
So you wanna make sure that, that it's,
that the, the yeast is still somewhat
active and still making bubbles,
and hasn't produced too much alcohol
just yet when you put it in the oven.
And then, then you get what's called
oven spring, which is you get a sudden
spurt of activity of that yeast right
before it dies, and kinda like a, a
little kid right before they go to
sleep at night, you know, they'll...
Yeah.
Run in circles, screaming, shouting.
You know, they're asleep.
Rupert Isaacson: Fascinating.
All right.
I have another I've got two more
rabbit holes I wanna go down with you.
All right.
I love rabbit holes ... one, one
is, one is another horse one.
And it's funny, when you said e-
equanim- e- was it equ- equanimith?
Easy for you to say.
The medicine is equan- Equanimitas.
Yeah ... equanimitas.
I, with you- But it's got
Glenn Cochran: equus in it, doesn't it?
You're right.
It's
Rupert Isaacson: like you could say
you're doing equanimitas medicine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So before you ended up exploring
the Iberian horses you took a
line with the Peruvian horses.
Right.
And I presume you were still also
always using quarter horses on
the ranch as well because you need
a certain number of horses to...
You've got 500 acres there.
You're, you're, how many
head of cattle is that?
Glenn Cochran: Well, we, we tend to run
anywhere from 1 to 200 head on this place.
That's about what I thought.
That's a lot.
So you- Yeah.
Depends on the weather, you know.
Rupert Isaacson: And are you
primarily doing that from horseback?
Yeah, yeah.
Right We do all
Glenn Cochran: our cattle work horse, man.
Yeah.
So you've
Rupert Isaacson: got to have, you
know, a decent herd, right, to-
Yeah ... to, you know, 'cause you've
gotta have spare horses, horses go lame,
horses throw shoes, whatever, right?
So you've gotta have enough horses.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
So y- you, you're having, I presume,
to always work a certain variety of
breeds because i- it's tough to have
the entire herd for that at this stage
all Iberian or all Peruvian or...
Right.
So you, you correct me if I'm wrong,
but you're probably doing Quarter
Horses and Iberians, I should imagine.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: I'm, I'm using on
our ranch work, I'm getting to where
I use mostly Iberians or Iberian
crosses, like the Azteca- Okay,
Aztecas ... which is the half Quarter.
Yeah ... Azteca.
Right.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: So you've sort
of gravitated over into that.
Yeah.
More like, more like frankly the
Charros, the Mexican cowboys would
be, would be doing- Yeah ... with
that kind of horse, I guess.
Glenn Cochran: And they, they,
they also use quite a few Quarter
Horses probably more than the
Aztecas nowadays, but, but they do.
The Charros use both.
Right.
But and it's it, it, the, the Azteca's
a really interesting horse because
the, you never know for sure what,
what percentage you're gonna get
of Quarter Horse versus Iberian.
Absolutely ... so it's, it, you,
you can kinda get fooled sometimes.
But they, they usually
have a lot of cow sense.
Of course, you know, the, the, the
Portuguese cross with the- Yeah
with the Quarter Horse.
You know, you're crossing a bull fighting
horse with a cutting horse, that's g-
Yeah ... they got a lot of cow, you know.
Rupert Isaacson: No, they do.
They do, they do.
And, you know, it's so interesting
that people have a perception of the
Iberian horse as in like a fancy horse.
It's like- Yeah ... if you go to the
hills th- that we're very familiar with
in Andalusia and Portugal, well, it's open
range cattle ranching, 'cause that's- Yeah
where it came from before it
went on a ship to the Americas.
And guess what horse they're doing it on?
The local horse, which happens to be
a PRE or a p- or a Lusitano, because
that's what's in the hills . So- Or,
Glenn Cochran: or sometimes what they
call a Jaca, which is- Yes ... it's
basically it's what we call an Azteca,
I guess, 'cause they're, they're a
cross between Iberian and it might
be a Thoroughbred cross- Exactly
or maybe a little Arab
cross, that kind of thing.
Sometimes Arab, sometimes
Rupert Isaacson: Hispanic Arab.
Yeah.
Exactly.
Or a Cruzado they call it.
But, but it's- Mm-hmm ... it's
effectively an Iberian horse.
Yeah.
They are the original cowhorse, right?
Yeah.
So it's interesting that there's now this
perception of the Quarter Horse being
the cowhorse, when of course it's not the
original cowhorse, it's a later cowhorse.
Yeah.
But you had this, So I want, I want to
go down a small h- horse rabbit hole, and
then I want to go down a cow rabbit hole.
Thinking about- Okay ... a
big cow down a rabbit hole.
Your Peru- Your, your adventure with
the Peruvian horses, you mentioned
doing stuff with a long stick.
I presume you meant the garrocha.
Is that right?
You, you- Well, actually the-
And, and were you working
cows off the Peruvian horses?
The- Everyone's gonna think-
Yeah ... what im- immediately what
I think, isn't that a gaited horse?
And then can...
how effective is working
cows off a gaited horse?
Because don't you need that sprint, you
know, to catch the cow and the spin?
So talk to us about that.
Glenn Cochran: Okay.
Well, the, the, the poll that I was
referring to with the Peruvian horses
is basically the, the single pillar.
Ah.
'Cause they use the single pillar to
work the horses around- Okay ... with
the rope wrapped around it.
Yeah ... in a manner, that's interesting.
Rupert Isaacson: That's the
17th century French- Yeah
and English method.
Goes, goes all the way back to the,
Glenn Cochran: the, the Duke
of Newcastle, basically.
The Duke of Newcastle.
Well, oh- The single
pillar, work on two tracks.
Yeah Yeah.
A modern treatise of horsemanship.
Indeed.
1625.
1625.
So, I get a big kick out of,
out of use of that phrase and
thinking of- He was another man
Rupert Isaacson: who was very
much into the humanities.
Yeah You know, he was also a playwright
and a medic and a military man and,
and, and, you know, Duke of Newcastle-
Yeah ... philosopher, patron of the arts.
You,
you,
Glenn Cochran: you nailed it.
Yeah,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Anyway, politician.
Glenn Cochran: So- And, and interestingly,
Cavendish in his, in the, the book
that I have, he has pictures of what
he calls the, the you called it the
head part, you know, the- Cavesson
cavesson.
Yeah.
So he calls it a cavesson or, or actually
I think the book was originally written
in French, so he calls it cavesson.
That's right.
But the picture is, it's a
hand-drawn picture of a serretón.
I mean, there is absolutely not one
bit of difference between- Absolutely
... the cavesson in Newcastle's book
and the, and the serretón that all
Spanish horse breakers- Absolutely
use to start colts.
It's just- Yeah ... it's amazing.
Nothing's changed in ever how
many- No ... hundred years that is.
And the bosal
Rupert Isaacson: is a, is a, is a, is a
riff on that as well and- That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
The
Glenn Cochran: bosal, the
Peruvian bosal is basically a
serretón made out of rawhide.
Yeah Braided rawhide.
And so, yeah, and we, you know, I was
mainly trying to make side saddle horses,
but the side saddle horse has to be really
solid 'cause they're gonna be having
dresses flapping around on 'em- Mm-hmm
they're gonna be in parades, they're
going all kind of stuff going on.
They have to be absolutely tranquil.
Mm-hmm.
So we use them as cow horses 'cause
then you're gonna carry ropes and
bullwhips and have dogs- Right, right
... running around their feet and stuff.
And so after they've worked on the ranch
as a cow horse, well then you can put
them in a side saddle and put them in
a parade and there's nothing to it.
You know, they got-
Mm ... that figured out.
Then, And we, we found that some
of them were, were pretty athletic.
You know, they actually
had pretty good balance.
Some of them, the, the gait might
not be quite as smooth as the more
smoother-gaited horse, but they can,
they can get around and do things,
and they could have that spurt of
speed that they needed to work a cow.
Then some of them we would say, "Yeah,
that one has got a, got a gallop
kind of like a fat woman carrying
two buckets of water," you know?
They, they're not gonna be able to squirt
out too, too well and, and work cattle.
But they are smoother, you know, they're
more laterally based and more into what
they call Huachano horses, you know?
So, and, and now I'm not training so
much Peruvians, but I've kind of stayed
in touch with, with my, my friends
who, who are Peruvian horse trainers.
And some of them, one of them
in fact, is back in Peru.
He's, he's winning a bunch of
stuff, and his grandfather was
kind of the, the Francois Robichon
of Peruvian horse trainers, a guy
named Jose Al- Jose Alba Leon.
Alba would be his last name.
His mother's last name was Leon.
And Jose Alba wasn't a very big guy.
He kind of reminds you of
Baucher though really in a way.
Lot of flexions.
Lot of flexions.
And this guy was, I guess he was
probably like in the 1930s '40s maybe
a really big-name trainer in his day.
And his one of the things that I learned
from, from his grandson was a, a system
of doubling or flexions that, that I use.
I use it on the Iberians, the
Quarter Horses, everybody.
If I'm in a- Tell us about the system.
Okay.
It's a small pen, and you kind of
look at the pen from the top like
you're looking at a clock face.
So you're gonna start out at 12
o'clock, and you're gonna walk to
1:00 and stop the horse, and you're
gonna do a flexion to the right until
it's soft and a flexion to the left.
So it's one and one.
It's 1:00, one and one.
And then you let the horse walk
forward to 2:00, and usually you
would, you could stop them a number of
different ways, but you're not letting
them go very fast at this point.
Right.
At 2:00 you do one flexion on the
right side, one flexion on the left
side, one second flexion on the right
side, second flexion on the left side.
So it's one, one, two, two, and so forth.
3:00 you're gonna do three flexions.
When you get back around to 12, you're
gonna actually be doing 12 flexions
on each side, and then I go one more.
I call it the 13 doubles.
That's my name for the exercise.
By the time you've done that, you've
done about 180, minimum of 180
flexions within about 30 minutes.
And you talk about
being soft as bubblegum.
I mean, they're just, you know.
And, and they, they accept the flexion.
They, they don't really have
any great desire to run away or
buck or do anything like that.
They, they have really definitely
been toned down considerably.
Sometimes I come back and I do it again.
Most of the time I don't really have
to go through that whole routine 'cause
the next day that I ride him I'll do a
bunch of in-hand work- Mm ... and I'll
do some flexions, and then I'll get on,
I'll do some flexions, static flexions,
'cause that was Baucher's, one of his
basic abiding principles was if you
can get the horse to get in a certain
position standing still, he'll kind of
remember that with his central nervous
system when you start moving forward.
Mm-hmm.
And so then, then the flexion's there.
Well, that, that was all with Peruvian
horses, and so then I started learning
the, the Baucher technique and, and
then the Iberian horses, and it's, well,
damn, there's no difference, you know?
You're just you're doing the same thing.
Well,
Rupert Isaacson: As you may know,
if you've been following my work,
we are also horsey folk here.
And we have been training horses for
many, many years in the manner of
the old classical dressage masters.
This is something which is
often very confusing for people.
We shine a light on that murky, difficult
stuff and make it crystal clear.
If you'd like to learn to train your
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and begin to take the Helios Harmony
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And then from there, you can
develop out to anywhere you want to.
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com to unlock the secrets
of the old masters.
what's really interesting is
I'm going to hit pause and go
grab a particular book- Okay
which makes a really interesting...
So just please don't run away.
It, it's gonna take me- I'll be
right here . All right, I'm back.
So- All right ... nothing
new under the sun, right?
Right ... my favorite book,
again, it's another Xenophon
Press book is this one Dressage
in the French Tradition by Don- Ah
Diogo de Braganza.
Yeah.
Because he, for those who don't know, he
was one of the lifelong local students
of Nuno Oliveira, and but synthesizes
Nuno's approach and work in this
rather slim volume really, really well
because Nuno himself can sometimes be
a bit difficult to understand unless
it's his letters to his students
telling them exactly what to do.
Those are great.
Also published by Xenophon.
But the Baucher flexions, the things
that are, Oh, and by the way, another
lovely thing about this book is he also
goes into the, the rejoneo and, and
how the bull fighting work and the cow
work must exist hand-in-hand with with
the Doma Classica, the, the, the, the
formalized balletic dressage, et cetera.
But the exercise that you just described
was taught to me in a different way
where you count down in straight lines.
So you're doing it a round- you could do
it in a round pen too, but you, you count
from 10 and you stop, and then you flex
each way, and then you count to eight and
stop, flex each way, six, four, two, one.
And then with each stop, the horse's
hind legs also come a little more under
the body just because- Yeah ... of
the nature of the beast, really.
And then you can then add after
that, after the flexions, a backup.
So you'd always go two steps back
or four steps back and then forward
to the next countdown and flexion.
And then you can add a very s-
gentle jog trot to that, and the
same thing, stop, flex, back up.
You can even add a canter
transition to that- One, two,
three, four, stop, flex, back up.
And then by the time you've been doing
that, you find your horse is in piaffe.
Yeah.
And that's in this book.
But also the Baucher flexions and this
is what is so interesting, is it turns
out, and you may know this, that what
seemed to be so revolutionary with Baucher
in his second manner of working in this
latter half of the 19th century, in fact
exists in a 17th century German book.
Ah,
ah.
Did not know that.
All of the static
flexions.
So there's the, now this, this debate
is, well, did he get it from that and
just kind of, you know, because it's
a very obscure text, or did he just by
chance stumble into the same approach?
But then there's this one about a h- in
the 17th century, and there's another
one who comes in in the 19th century
just a little bit before Baucher himself.
So it seems that Baucher might
have himself gotten this from older
masters who were working on a slightly
branched out tradition of the kind of
Pluvinel pre La Guérinière, more like,
Duplessis Solomon de La Bruere era.
Yeah.
Which is just fascinating, isn't it?
Because it, it shows that the,
all roads lead back to the same
thing, and the fact that- That's it
you've got the Peruvian guys
using the single pillar like
the Duke of Cavendish and
Glenn Cochran: Like with, with
Gutenberg allegedly inventing the
printing press, but the Chinese claim
they invented the printing press.
And it's like if you go back to Charles
V when when he handed over to Felipe
Segundo the, the his part of the Holy
Roman Empire, which was Spain and Italy.
Okay?
And so where did Baucher go as a teenager?
He went to work with his uncle in Italy.
And so if you think that maybe some
of this horsemanship came out of
the Reconquista for, you know, what,
800 years of, of Islamic warriors
fighting with Frankish warriors-
Maybe the stuff was already there.
You know, maybe the Italians were
just d- continuing to do something
that had been going on for hundreds
of years, maybe even thousands.
And, and so when Baucher works, I mean,
this is all just a fabrication in my mind.
If I was gonna write a novel and yeah.
And, and so, so he comes back
from Italy having worked with his
uncle, and we got the flexions.
And I'm thinking, you know, did...
We don't know much about what he did
with his uncle, but it's possible
that he may, may have learned
flexions there too, and so then- Right
I mean, all this stuff is going
on at the same time, you know?
Rupert Isaacson: And then of course,
I've got this great friend, Philip
Wirtz in Germany, who is a fellow
horseman, and he's a pr- ex-professor
of Islamic studies at School of Oriental
and African Studies in London, London
University, and he's made a study of all
the l- all the lost texts of classical
writing from the Middle Ages- Wow, okay
'cause they don't, they're, they're
not really in Europe at that point.
There's Edward, there's one book from
Edward Duarte the King of Portugal,
who says, "Actually, we learned a
lot of this stuff from the Moors."
Most of the books on fine equitation
in the Middle Ages are Islamic,
and they're published- Ah, okay
yeah, they're published either in the
Ottoman Empire or they're published
in in North Africa and, and in Spain.
But they're not in English.
And, and of course since we,
we don't read the language.
And he's read them.
We don't read them, we don't read them.
Yeah.
But okay, so this, this, here's about
Baucher, so this is really interesting.
Here it goes.
"I will nevertheless bring up the words
of Gerhardt, student of the first method
on the subject of the German old school.
Gerhardt wrote, in 1869, that a man
called Christoph Jakob Liebons published
a Reitbuch, a riding book, in Leipzig in
1665 that contained the same principles
as Baucherism, and that another German,
Louis Hunersdorff, master rider to
the Prince of Hesse," it's just by
Kassel, it's published in Kassel, "in
1791," and that's very close to Mr.
Baucher's, you know, youth, "a work
in which is found the techniques that
allow one to think that Hunersdorff
was also a precursor to Baucher.
And then the sixth edition of the
work was translated into French by
the Belgian Captain de Broschowski
and published in Brussels in 1843,"
so right about the time that Baucher's
looking for a second manor- Yeah
"under the title Ãquitation à la monde,"
German equitation, "Méthode la plus
facile," the, the most easy method, "et la
plus nouvelle," and the newest to train,
put together the horse, the, of, of the,
the, the officer and, and the amateur.
German horsemanship, the easiest and
most natural method of training the
horse for the officer and the amateur.
The fact that these two German works
appeared, one of them 170 years
before, and the other 50 years before
The Second Manner, which was first
published in 1844, contained the concepts
and techniques claimed by Baucher.
Does this mean that the latter
w- that Baucher was a plagiarist?
In fact, Gerhardt writes that
despite appearances, no, it seems
that he hadn't copied anything.
He simply discovered a collection
of truths that without his knowledge
was contained in the German old
school, and he considerably perfected
it by his practical application.
Yeah.
But I don't know, maybe he was clever
and maybe he did actually, I don't know
if plagiarize is the right word, but
take something and put his name on it.
But isn't it, it just
is so interesting that
clearly- Yeah
... all of these old concepts have just gone
round and round and round and round,
presumably since guys like Kikkuli who
was keeping the royal stables for the
Hittite kings in 1375 BC, and wrote his
manual on clay tablets, and we've got
some fragments of those, and there's
exercises in there for the flying change.
And presumably these guys were getting it
from the guys up on the steppes, you know,
or from the- Oh, okay ... Iberia Celts,
Glenn Cochran: or from the- The Scythians,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
All of it, you know.
And, and- Yeah ... then of course
you've got the Greeks going up and down
from the Black Sea where Scythia is in
Ukraine, all the way out to Hispania-
Yeah
where the, the, the, the Iberian
horses and those Iberia Celtic tribes.
And I slightly suspect
that nothing has changed.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: Well, it's,
it's- ... kind of like, what is it?
Podhajsky says, "My, my
professors are my horses."
Yeah.
You know, it's like maybe they all learned
it from some happy accident that they
just happened to start bending a horse
around for some reason, and it worked.
Say- Well- ... "Okay, well
let's do this some more."
Well, but
Rupert Isaacson: okay, this, and this is
where I want to go down your cow rabbit
hole, and this is why I think that the,
it, it, again, one of these strange
disconnects that people make, like that
there is a difference between western
riding and doma vaquera, which is now
what people call working equitation,
and dressage, which of course is just
illogical because the origins of the
equitation that we know in the West is
sort of Indo Europe and North Amer- and
the Americas, arises out of cowboying.
Because the economy of those people
on the steppes, I've spent time
in Mongolia- What do they do?
They cowboy for a living.
That's what they do.
They also horse boy, and they sheep
boy, and they goat boy, and they're
doing the whole thing on horseback.
Large herds, completely open
tracts of land, and the principal
economy is livestock and doing
it from the back of a horse.
So what do you need?
You need a handy horse that can
stop, start, spin because the
cow's gonna stop, start, and spin.
And then, of course, I noticed that
my friend Glen has some rather nice
looking cows over there, so I thought,
"Oh, maybe I'm gonna go get l- I'm
gonna go rustle some of those."
So I do that, and then Glen comes
back from his weekend away cowboying
for someone, notices that some
calves have gone, but sees the tracks
coming over the hills, and pretty
soon Glen's coming after me, so we
have a running fight on our horses.
So now we've got to use the same
principles in combat, and then a little
bit later at the great fair of the
steppes where we decide we're friends
again and we're getting drunk, then
we're going to have little competitions
of the livestock work, and we're gonna
have competitions in the horsemanship.
Yeah.
And we're gonna have competitions
in the, in the martial arts as
well because that's what we do
when we get together and celebrate.
And the same horse is going
to do all of these things.
Yeah.
That is the horse.
That is the collected horse.
So nowadays when people sort of say,
"Well, no, no, this is a dressage horse,
but this is a western horse, but this..."
No, no, no, it's the same horse, guys.
It's the same horse.
Yeah.
And the horse doesn't care.
The horse doesn't say, "I'm sorry,
I, I'm not, you know," "I, I'm, I'm
a, I'm a dressage horse.
I'm not going to go cow..."
The horse has no concept of that.
That's just a completely monkey idea.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So of course, livestock work is
absolutely at the center of it, and
down in Spain and Portugal, open range
cattle ranching, that was then exported
to the Americas, and it still goes on.
And of course, you need a horse that not
only works the cows, and the cow you want
to bring to you, or the calf or the steer,
but there's the bull you want to keep away
from you- Yeah ... and dance around it.
So you've got to use a lance, the
garrocha, and perhaps you may go
into the bullring and dance around
it with a rejon, a bandolero.
All right, so you are actually doing this.
Do you have the same passion for
cattle that you have for horses?
Because cattle, I've not worked a lot with
cattle, but my grandfather was a cattle
rancher, and I grew up around a certain
amount of cattle on the farms growing
up in Leicestershire in England, and I
know just enough about them to know what
an absolute pain in the ass they are.
They are ornery and dangerous,
and, All sorts of things, and not
easy to work with at all, and you
have to have a real feel for them.
But the people that have that feel for
them really have the feel for them.
Yeah.
Tell me about your relationship with cows.
Tell me about your relationship
with livestock, and then let's bring
it back to your horses and your
medicine, because we haven't really...
the concept of the cowboy, we tend
to think of cowboys as quite brutal,
and that's partly cowboys' own fault
because they like to project that image.
I was 20 years in Texas, and I'm
sorry, but your average cowboy swaggers
around like an asshole, and, ... you
know, behaves in such a way and talks
in such a way that even when you get
to know him, you realize that under
that gruff exterior is of course a
very, very sweet and very nice man.
But they have to project this macho
image a lot of the time, which, you know,
let's say doesn't endear people perhaps.
But nonetheless, you can't just be all
brutality if you're going to work with
animals that are considerably larger
than you and can be quite aggressive.
So talk us through your whole
relationship with the humanities and
cattle and medicine and horses and so
on and, and, and the ranching life.
Glenn Cochran: Well, it, of course,
when I was working with Buck
Kidwell as a, as a teenager, 14, 15
years of age the whole thing that,
that we were doing was cowboying.
You know what I mean?
That, that's all we knew then.
Nobody ever saw an English
saddle in those days.
Nobody had any idea about that stuff
around this part of the country.
And so it was all about, you know,
you're making a cow horse, and after a
couple of years of, of work, you know,
you should have a pretty fine cow horse.
But some of the early work with, with
cows with, with a horse you know, you
had to get the horse over being scared
of the cows and all that kind of thing.
And then of course then we would, we,
the idea of, of roping was to immobilize
the cow so you could doctor on it, you
know, vaccination or something like that.
So, so there it's, it's management,
and you, you sure don't wanna hurt
them because that's your product.
So- Mm ... in those days we weren't,
we weren't seeing $5 a pound c-
calves like we're seeing right now.
This is, this is totally unheard of.
But then, you know, 35 cents a
pound was, was a big price for
a cow, but that's all you had.
You know, there was, we were in a big
drought back in those days and, and the
w- people in the ranching business really
weren't making a lot of money of any kind.
So, and some of them would start,
you know, breaking horses and stuff
like that just to kind of have a
little income in addition to what
little bits you get out of the cows.
We didn't have sheep so much
in this part of the country.
That's we're, the parasite load
is just too much for sheep here.
It's too humid.
So West Texas was where you, you
would see the, the sheep and goats.
But what I learned is that that cows
have their own ideas about things.
And one day I was in that pen that
we broke colts in, and there was
a cow in there with a baby calf.
Buck had put her in there, I guess she'd
just had the calf, and, and he was kinda
watching her to make sure she was okay.
And at that point I didn't really
know, you know, all that much about
the, the cow part of cowboying.
So I was due to learn.
When I went in the pen and she was
there, and she kind of rung her tail
at me a little bit and pawed the ground
once, and I thought, "That's pretty
cute," so I pawed the ground with
my foot, you know, pawed the ground.
And, and she dropped her head, and she
had some pretty good sized horns on her.
She came after me.
And I mean, she launched at me.
And, and I...
The, the pen had sides that were
made out of rough-cut oak boards that
were probably about eight feet tall,
but I cleared that son of a bitch.
At just about the time she
hit it with those horns.
And so I, I learned a real important
lesson there, was these, these little
women are very serious about their babies.
They take them real serious,
and you don't mess with them.
And so, now we don't...
Well, in fact, people are starting to
worry about screw-worm flies again now,
but we don't, we're not seeing them yet.
But in those days, first thing that'd
happen is the damn flies would blow
a calf's umbilical cord, and you'd
get a screw-worm larva infestation,
and you could lose the calf.
So we had to really watch them close,
and then it was a l- most of that
was a little before my time, but I
remember putting stuff called Pink
Lady on there to keep the flies off.
And before that, the Smear, Smear 62 was
the, the sticky, really foul-smelling
stuff that you would put in any
wound that had been, what they call
blowed, or had larva already in it.
And it would kill the larva, and
it would stick to the, that gooey,
rotten stuff enough that no, no
more new flies would come in.
And so, well- Almost like a
type of tar, maybe ... yeah.
Well, what this means is you're gonna
have to rope a calf to doctor it
whose mother really wants to kill you.
She really wants to kill you.
And so sometimes it would be, you know,
you'd have two cowboys working together-
And you, you'd get the calf caught, and
then one of the cowboy's job was to, to,
with a lariat rope, you know, kind of
swatting at the cow to keep her off of
you until you could get your job done.
And you work as fast as you can to
get that over with, 'cause you wanna
turn that calf back to that cow.
Some, some wise guy told me one
time, says, "Well, if you just
hold the calf between you and
the cow, she won't bother you."
You know, I got run
over trying that trick.
So y- that, that doesn't
work too good either.
So, so to try to cowboy all by
yourself ... I saw a, a video one time,
it was somewhere in South America.
This guy had a mule, and I don't know how
he trained this mule to do this, but he
was working on the calf, I think he was
putting an ear tag in it or something,
and that mule was, was facing him and
the calf with, with her rear end, her
very lethal pair of boxing gloves in
back aimed at the cow, and, and she
was keeping that cow off of that guy.
And I thought, "Boy, I want one of those.
I really want that mule bad."
But so that was kind of the,
some of the initial stuff.
And then penning cattle.
Sally went with us one time,
first time she ever penned cattle.
Of course, I'd been doing it
for several years by that time,
so I was the expert, you know?
So we go out in the brush.
Brush here, our forests, most of the trees
are probably anywhere from 10 to 15 feet.
Down in the creek bottoms they
might be 30 or 40 feet, but we
don't have big, tall trees, but we
got a lot of brush in between them.
Yaupon, and wait-a-minute vines,
and greenbrier, so the, the, the
It's dry, but, but tangly,
brushy stuff, you know?
Mm-hmm.
It's really hard to get through.
A, a, a snake has trouble
getting through this stuff.
And so we're back there and we're
rounding up about 300 head of cattle,
and there's five or six cowboys and,
I don't know, four or five dogs.
W- we call them leopard dogs, some
people call them Catahoula dogs.
Mm.
But they're cow dogs, and they
go out there ... They're, they're
hunters, basically, and they
go out there and hunt the cows.
And the only thing is that, that
they're, they're not allowed to
bite the cows, but they can, they
can bay them and, and push them.
And Sally said, "Until we broke
out ... for about two hours, until
we broke out in the open right
before we got to the corrals, I
heard dogs, I heard cowboys, 'Whoop!'
you know, making their sound.
I, I heard cows, 'Mraah!'"
And, and these are Braham
cross cows, they're, "Grr."
This horrible sound, you think it's
a di- it's a dinosaur gonna eat you.
And then, and then the calves.
And y- she heard all that, but
she said, "Never saw a dadgum cow
until they broke out in the open,"
'cause you're in that brush, thick.
Yeah.
And the reason the cowboy's making noise
is 'cause you wanna know that you're level
with the other guys on either side of you.
So they, they call it the song of
the brush, and it's like- You're,
you're making just enough noise, or
you may be whistling or humming or
doing something so they can tell where
you are, 'cause they can't see you.
And- Yeah ... and so we're all
coming together, and so you know
all 300 cows are in front of you.
And then we get them into the
pens, and then we start the sorting
process, which one of the most
elegant ballets I've ever seen.
But usually Buck would be doing it.
He would stand in the gate and
we'd have a bunch of cattle in a
pen, and I'm back there pushing,
pushing the cattle towards him.
And of course you got cows and calves
and you're trying to sort them,
and he'd be, he'd be there with
his stallion and a bullwhip in this
probably about a 10 or 12-foot gate.
He and the horse are
the gate at this point.
And if a cow tried to come by,
he'd pull back, let the cow go by.
If a ca- if a calf tried to get
out, he'd jump forward, maybe
crack that bullwhip, do something
to get that calf to run back in.
And in about 30 minutes, we had
300 calves and no cows in that
pen, and it was just amazing.
Even today I, I find that's the,
that's one of the jobs of a cutting
horse is a, a gate horse like that.
So then we'd start, you know, catching
the calves and working them, and
that's when you find out that little
calves can kick pretty hard if
you're in the wrong place and, and
sometimes they can fight pretty hard.
What's funny is the cattle
that we're raising right now,
we call them Corriente cattle.
They're northern Mexican cattle.
It's the ones that they use
for roping in rodeos and stuff.
And we've- Why are you raising those?
Well, we've evolved into that
because we starved out in 2011.
We got such a bad drought, we
sold all the cattle on the place.
Rupert Isaacson: I remember that drought.
That's- Yeah ... that was
the year of the big fires.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
So, we thought, "Well, what can we
put back on the place that'll survive
these, this desertification that
we're starting to go through here?"
And a friend of mine said, "Well,
why don't you raise Corrientes?"
And so I started buying them, and
next thing I know, I've got a h- a
herd of 150 of them and, and I've
got a guy that, that likes to buy
our calves from us that he's he's
involved with the team roping business.
So yeah, we actually make
a little bit off of them.
They're nothing like beef cattle
for price, but you know, we
make something off of them.
And the good thing about it is I get
rid of the calves before they're three
or four months old, so they don't...
you don't have to worry about
the, the cow getting dragged
down too bad by the calves.
But back I guess it was in the '70s-
We were raising Simmental cattle.
That's the s- the, Oh,
the big German ones.
Yeah ... Swiss, yeah,
Swiss and German cow.
And these suckers would be fif- easy
1,500 pound cows, and they'd- we'd wean
calves off at between 500 and 600 pounds
at, at five and six months of age.
I mean, they were just ... And they were,
they were wonderful cows to deal with.
They're very tame, very sweet for the
most part, until they have a calf,
and then the tameness goes away for
a little while, and, and you have
to kind of watch out for them too.
And they were horned cattle too.
So, but after a while, the, the
price and, and the desire for
Simmentals kind of dropped off, and
we ended up getting out of that.
We started cross-breeding them
at first with, with Brangus and-
Mm-hmm ... and Beefmaster and stuff.
But then we finally realized what
was selling was the, the Brahman
Hereford cross, Braford cattle-
Oh ... or tiger stripes as a
lot of people call them, or F1.
That, that crossed with an Angus
bull would give you something that
would go to the, to the feed lot.
Everybody loves them, you know, the
white Black Baldy kind of thing.
And so we started raising Brafords
and and we did pretty well with
those until about 2011, and
that's when we sold all those out.
But we were, we were raising a herd
of, of Braford heifers and selling
them at a special sale and, and
making pretty good money off of them
'cause people really wanted them.
You know, that's, that's the brush, the
... That's the queen of the brush, you know?
She's the one that takes care of her
calf and comes up with a calf every year
without fail, all that kind of thing.
And they, they are different.
You know, the, the Bos indicus
we, we were using Brahman bulls
on Hereford cows to do it.
Some people do it the other direction.
But you're, you're still working with
either Brahman or part Brahman, and
those cattle are extremely personal.
They either love you or they hate you.
There's no in between.
Hmm.
And if they, if they know you,
they'll do anything for you.
But I, I'd be like by springtime
after feeding these heifers through
winter, I could walk out in the middle
of a field and they'd come crowd
around me like, "Hey, it's Glen.
Let's go see what Glen's up to."
You know, where somebody th- that
they didn't know walks in that field,
you know, it's like they're gone.
Where'd they go?
They just disappeared.
Hmm.
So they knew who I was, and they
knew that whoever that is is not him.
It's ... There's Glen and
then there's not Glen.
There's two categories
of human being, you know?
And so, so that the, the Brahman influence
... One guy joked, he says, it, the, the,
"When the Brahman influence came into
Texas, it changed all the corrals."
Either you built for 'em or you rebuilt
after they flattened the whole place.
'Cause, 'cause they
just, they're that way.
They, they get skitzy, you know,
and, and if they start running, well,
they just, they'll just run into and
flatten out anything in their way.
So wooden corrals some parts of
which may have been made out of
old bed springs, that's a good joke
around here- Yeah ... they're gone.
You know, everything's welded pipe now
'cause that's the only thing that'll
hold these, these cross-bred cattle.
But, and, and they can be nice
and tame when, if you work with
them and you feed 'em by hand.
A lot of people will pen
'em without using a horse.
You know, they'll go out there with
a sack of range cubes and they'll
bring 'em in the pens and all this.
But then you get in that pen ... Have
you ever wondered why a bull will
fight when he's in a bull ring,
when out in the pasture he doesn't?
Claustrophobia.
You put that sucker in a small area
and he don't have no place to go to get
away from you, he's got another choice.
If I can't run from you,
I'm gonna run through you.
Mm.
And that's where bull fighting, you know,
you have to have the right size pen.
You gotta have some possibility that
you know he's gonna make a run at
you that's gonna last about so long.
That's where I'm thinking Pablo Hermoso he
knows, he learns about a bull pretty quick
how long that bull's- sortie is gonna be.
And so he knows, okay, if, if he's
gonna make a 14 or 20-foot sortie, I
know th- I gotta be out there at the
end of that so I don't get run over.
And then of course they got the, the,
the the quiebro and the sancada, all
the different things that the horse
does to dodge the bull and all that.
But he probably, that, that bull may not
do anything to you if you're out in the
middle of a 500 acre pasture, you know?
He just says, "Okay, there's a horse.
I don't like him.
I'm gonna walk over here."
But, but you put him in a small area.
Well, that's what happened with Brahman
cross cattle when you put 'em in a pen.
They, it's the same phenomenon,
and you learn how to get the heck
out of their way pretty dang quick.
When, when one of 'em looks at
you, it's like, "Oh, shit," you
know, and you get out of the way.
And if you're working 'em horseback,
you're pretty much okay, 'cause they,
they don't usually take on a horse.
Although I have had some
wrecks with that too.
I've had some, Somebody asked
me one time, he says, "Well, you
talk about bullfighting so much.
Have you ever done it?"
I said, "Well, as a matter of
fact, I have," but it wasn't
exactly the formal type.
I was usually either in, in a, in a
brush thicket trying to, to catch a, a
Brangus bull and get him out of there,
and he was more interested in killing
me than he was getting out of there.
And I've been hit.
I've had horses w- knocked almost
out from under me all kind of stuff.
You know, when, when they take a notion
to get after you, they go, they're quick.
They can move.
Mm.
This, you know, this animal that
looks too big to move that fast
is like lightning all of a sudden.
Yeah.
Yeah, they are.
And so I've, yes, I've been hit, I've
been knocked down, I've been run over,
I've been kicked, I've been every...
Well, in fact, I had one that pinned
me up against the fence with her horns.
It was a cow, and, and my brother
was on the other side of the fence.
I say he's my brother.
We, he's an adopted brother, but
anyway he, he climbed up the fence,
got up above me, grabbed my arms and
pulled me up out from this pair of
horns that had me nailed to the fence.
Wow.
So, so those are some of the wonderful,
fun things that you get into.
And of course you're doing
it under ideal circumstances.
Temperatures ranging sometimes
close to 15 degrees Fahrenheit wind
out of the north blowing sleet.
You're trying to calve out a cow.
You're she's laying down and you're
laying down in, in icy wet grass.
Your horse, hope to God he's staying
with you over here standing off to the
side, and you're trying to get a leg
out so you can pull this calf, you know?
Right.
That, that's some of the other
fun things that you get into.
And then of course she shows her
appreciation when she stands up and
runs you back to your horse, you know?
Or, or milk fever.
You know, she's, she hadn't hadn't had
the calf yet, but her the calcium level
in your, in your pasture's a little bit
too low, she gets hypocalcemic 'cause
she's putting it all in the milk.
And so she goes down and
she gets all eh, like that.
And so you go out there with your
veterinarian and you run a IV in
her and you squirt some calcium in
her, and she comes up and she tries
to run you both into your truck.
You know?
Th- that just, they, they have
some interesting ways of behaving.
They can be real friendly and real sweet.
You can hand them a range cube
and they'll take it out of your
hand, or they'll try to kill you.
And it, and it can happen within
a half a second, you know?
So you learn that personality trait.
And then with, when you're working with
them horseback, you learn that the,
that they'll go so far and then they'll
stop and turn around, and that horse
has gotta be able to stop, back up
and turn around in order to stay with
them, otherwise they, they got you.
They're, they've just outwitted you.
So that's where the horse part comes in.
You learn to watch a cow.
If she looks there, she's going there.
If her ear twitches,
she's gonna do something.
If her tail rings up over the
back of her neck, get the hell out
of the way, she's coming to you.
You know, it's just all kind
of stuff that you learn about
how to read a cow's intention.
But they are smart and they can be
pretty damned athletic sometimes.
They, they may not look like it too much
when they're just walking along through
a field, but that can change in a second.
And, and,
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, I, I remember being
at my, a, a cattle sale at my grandad's in
Zimbabwe with Brahman bulls, and just the
bull jumping out of the auctioneer's ring.
Yeah.
Came out of the auctioneer, hey everybody.
I'd say the fence was approaching seven
feet high, and the thing just walked
up to it and jumped into the crowd.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
I'd never seen people move so fast.
Not, not like
Glenn Cochran: you had to have
a running start or anything.
No, no.
You just sort of like a high
Rupert Isaacson: jumper.
Glenn Cochran: Here we go.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, straight over.
And how do you even do it?
But this is what I mean.
I mean, all the reasons that you've just
elucidated, they make great stories,
but when you're actually doing it,
it's massively hard work and often
very painful, and sometimes lethal.
Yeah.
So you've got to have a real love for it.
Why do you love cows?
Like, 'cause you could
just be doing horses, Glen.
You could've just been a colt starter
and a, you know, and, and all of that.
W- With, And you're also running
a medical practice on top of that.
A ranch is kind of full time, and you're,
you're, you're not like a, a gentleman I
mean, you are a gentleman, but y- you're
not i- you're not doing a, a weekend Well,
that could be debated, but All right.
I haven't talked to your wife yet, Glen.
But y- you know, 500 acres in Central
Texas, I know that's actually a very,
that's a, a very viable economic unit.
So, that's kind of a full-time- gig-
Yeah ... and a very demanding full-time
gig on top of your full, demanding
full-time gig of being a doctor,
on top of your demanding full-time
gig of, of being a horse trainer.
So why?
Why do it?
Why the cows?
Why that extra work?
Glenn Cochran: Well, it's, somebody
asked me one time, "Do you raise, do you
raise horses to work your cattle, or do
you raise cattle to work your horses?"
And I said, "You know,
it's kind of confusing.
I'm not sure I know the answer
to that 'cause- Mm-hmm ... it's
kind of a little bit of both."
But I remember as a little kid, I guess
I was probably about 10 or 11 we lived
next door to a dairy, and this was a
bunch of Jersey cows out there, and
they were kept in, in their pasture
with a single strand electric fence.
Which by the way, you know, you can
either learn about them by reading
about it in a book, or you can learn
about it by paying on the fence.
Rupert Isaacson: Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Glenn Cochran: One, one, one
lesson will really stick with
you better than the other.
Anyway so I would go crawl
under that fence and go out
there and mess with the cows.
I was just fascinated with them-
Yeah ... just like I was about horses.
And so- Okay, so the, so
Rupert Isaacson: the cows themselves did
and still do have a fascination for you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
I have, in fact, my, my first
riding experience was a cow.
It was a little Jersey cow.
I'd go out there every day after school,
and I'd start petting on her, and next
thing I know I'd lean over, and before
I knew it, I was sitting on her and
she was walking around the pasture.
She didn't try to buck me off or anything.
She's real tame.
And I thought, "Boy, if it's
this much fun with a cow, what
would it be like with a horse?"
You know?
So yeah, I don't know, I just like cows.
I like the smell of them.
I like the- Mm ... watching them.
I like, like seeing the babies
come and, and working with them,
you know, the work with the lariat
rope and all that kind of stuff.
And, you know, it's an art, you know?
It is.
It's, it's, it's fun.
I've, in fact, I'm an honorary charro,
or as my wife says, an ornery charro.
I've, I've learned a little bit about
some of the rope spinning stuff and, and
how to work with the cattle, but their,
their big orientation, the charro is,
his whole thing is you wanna work with
cattle in such a way that you don't cause
damage to them or them do damage to you.
So you, you gotta, you know, it's
a, a way of working with animals.
And we actually prefer to work them
with the ropes and, and by hand rather
than putting them through chutes,
although I do have a chute and for
some things it's, it's preferable.
But, you know, they, banging up
against pipes and stuff like that- Mm
uh, we, I'd just rather not
do that if we don't have to.
So, anyway, it's, it's, and some
of it's a matter of opinion.
There's some people think that, you
know, what we do is terrible, and I
say, "Well, do you eat hamburgers?"
And they say, "Yeah."
"Okay.
Well, then you're eating a dead animal,
and somebody had to kill that animal,
so just think about that a little bit."
Sure.
And
Rupert Isaacson: No, I mean, that,
that, those discussions, I mean- ... in
my mind, they're almost not worth
having because yeah, for all of
the arguments- Yeah ... already.
You're not gonna win
that one.
If, if- It's anyway, that's-
But anyway, and it's interesting, all,
in my, in my, All my autism work, I've
been early mentored, and then I continue
to be mentored from time to time by Dr.
Temple Grandin.
Ah.
Oh, yeah ... who of course is, is autistic
and has devoted her life to making the
the slaughterhouses less stressful- Yeah.
Yeah ... for the animals
that go through them.
And she has this whole thing with cows.
And of course, for that she gets, you
know, death threats from the animal rights
people for, for trying to make it less
stressful for the animals going through.
So I mean, you know, what can you do?
But it, it's very interesting to...
You brought up the word charro.
So for the, again, listeners and
viewers who don't know what a charro
is I do 'cause I lived in Texas.
Can you explain what is a charro?
How does that relate- He- ... to
a cowboy, and how does that, how
does the charro kind of make the
connection between that classical
world and that white Western world?
Glenn Cochran: Okay.
The, there, there are I think nine
events in a charrerÃa, and they, most
of them have to do with either riding
rough stock or, or roping stuff.
And in one of the events is the escaramuza
charra, which is the girls, the eight
girls in a, in a drill team who do
death-defying enredado, you know, with
their, with their horses at a gallop.
And it's beau- with their
flowing dresses, and they're all
side-saddle, and it's wonderful.
That was my, my wife's passion
with the charrerÃa was, was with
the do- the So a charro is a
Rupert Isaacson: Mexican cowboy,
Glenn Cochran: right?
Yeah.
And basically there, there are
two types of Mexican cowboys.
There's the vaquero.
Mm-hmm.
And he's just literally a country cowboy.
That's, yeah.
And he handles the rope, and he
handles cattle, but it's, it's it's
pretty, pretty much, you know, what
needs to get done, that sort of thing.
The charro is a gentleman who,
who practices the art of elegant
cowboying, and it's the, the charrerÃa.
Y- you'll see, like, well, in, in
Amer- North American rodeo you got
eight seconds to get the calf tied.
In charrerÃa, you've got eight
minutes to do rope tricks before
you finally put the rope on the cow.
That's, that's kinda gives you an
idea of the difference, you know?
They- Yeah ... were looking for the,
the floreo it's called, you know,
making the flowers with the rope.
You know, taking it over, jumping
through it, and all that kinda stuff.
And then finally it goes out the remate.
The, the rope goes out, and the, and
the, the cow or horse or whatever it
is gets, gets their feet in the rope.
You pull the slack, and you
maybe put it around yourself.
All kinda interesting stuff.
And it's a, it's a big show.
Of course, the big, you know, the big
hat that's, that's worn and all that.
The, the costumery and everything.
It's, it's just a whole, culture of,
of the, the best of Mexican horse and
cattle work- Mm ... with the music, the
mariachi music and all that sort of thing.
So it's, it's just a beautiful fiesta.
And, and I became addicted to
it I guess back in, I don't
know, quite a few years ago.
So I was always showing up and
always, you know, participating.
We were doing what I guess you'd
call a halftime show with with the
sidesaddle horses at the charreada
down at in San Antonio during the
f- the Battle of the Flowers Parade
during the San Antonio fiesta.
And I got to know a bunch of the
charros and, and in fact, my...
Now, one of my neighbors is, is
a former charro who comes from a
family in Jalisco that that really
big into, into the charreria.
So we've been down there and we visited
with them a lot, and I actually learned
I, I tried to learn, shall we say, how
to do the cola a caballo, the, the the,
where you take a hold of the bull by the
tail and, and flip the bull, you know?
And- Yeah, yeah.
It's an amazing event-
I- ... that one ... yeah.
I got pieces of it figured out,
but I never really got good at
it, but it's, it's quite a deal.
And so they were, they were real helpful.
They, they coached me, you know?
Coached the gringo.
Yeah.
And but it's, it's a,
it's just a neat culture.
I just love being around it
and, and I love what they do.
Some of the stuff they do is
pretty artificial but, but
it's beautiful, you know?
It's- Yeah ... it's a wonderful
thing to do, and it, and it, it,
the, particularly the rope work.
You know, tho- those kids down there,
they're three years old and they
can do way more with a rope than,
than I ever will be able to do.
It's just amazing what they can do.
Mm.
So it's just, it becomes a part
of their, their life, you know?
Extension of your hand
is your reata, you know?
And, and they, they don't use...
They use the rawhide reata to an extent
down there for certain things, but
the charreria is always with the, the
maguey, you know, the ixtle fiber, the,
the stuff that comes from the cactus.
Okay.
And it's a lightweight rope.
There's two or three
different diameters of it.
And and they, y- they can get that thing
going and, and it just fascinates me.
I can sit there and watch
it by the hour, you know?
It's just- No, I,
Rupert Isaacson: I so agree.
I, I discovered it when I
lived in Texas, and what...
It always surprised me, though.
You know, we lived in Elgin, Texas.
Yeah.
And the Elgin rodeo ground the, you know,
the charra- the charreria would happen
at the s- at the same rodeo ground as,
as the regular white rodeo would happen.
Yeah.
But never the two would meet.
So it was really interesting.
We, we lived, Riding distance
from that rodeo ground Ah
and a short trailer distance.
So we, on occasion, would show up
with our Lusitano horses and just sort
of ride around and piaffe around and
enjoy 'cause, 'cause there's a lot
of really beautiful dressage riding
going on, classical riding as well.
As you know, at the end there's
often a classical event where people
are piaffing and passaging and
doing all these wonderful things,
and the winner is the one who gets
the best reaction from the crowd.
So they've all got, like, the people
in the crowd, you know, chucking
panties at them, you know, to- Yeah.
... to, to be the one that wins.
And I loved it, but what was so
interesting to me is the western riders
I knew in Elgin knew nothing about it.
Yeah And certainly, like, they lived
in the same town, and they were
completely unaware that this whole
other thing was going on that had
been going on since Texas was Mexico.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: And yet, and they would
go and eat at the Mexican restaurants
and they'd- and they would participate
in the rodeo, and they might even cowboy,
but they wouldn't have any crossover
to the Mexican cowboys, which I always
found that that would just floor me.
Yeah.
Because like, you only live down the road.
But again, that's where you're
so different, Glen, you know?
That you, you will always explore
every culture that's available to you.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
It's...
And, and Texas is so rich with it.
We have a, a huge negro horsemanship
culture- Absolutely ... in this state.
Yeah, yeah, the Black
Cowboys- That it's, it's...
Yeah.
It's even more- And the singlefooters
hidden than, yeah, it's even more hidden
than the Mexican culture, but I've-
Absolutely ... I've been with them.
There'd be 300 people on a trail ride-
Absolutely ... and, and it just, you
know, and, and you watch these people
work with these horses and you think, "You
know, these guys know what they're doing.
They know what that horse
is fixing to do next.
They are good.
They know what, what's, what you
can do and what you can't do."
And it's- they're, they're amazing.
You, you're right.
Rupert Isaacson: The, the, the
tradition is so rich there.
And again, for viewers and listeners
who don't know what the singlefooting
culture- Yeah, yeah, that's
Glenn Cochran: it
those black
Rupert Isaacson: people too.
Yeah.
You, you could take a trotting
horse- And whatever they got
a trotting horse as well.
Glenn Cochran: You- What's that?
Take a trotting horse, where like one
old boy said, he says, "I goes out
on a moonlit night and I takes that
horse," and he says that I rides out
till he good and tired, out on this
sandy road, out in the Brazos Bottom."
Yeah.
"I turn him around, I head him
back towards the house, and then
I jerk and snatch until I make
that sucker do a four beat gait.
By the time we get back to the house,
he be gaiting, he be saddling."
They, they refer to it
as saddling, you know?
He's- Yeah ... he's in a four beat gait.
And it might not even have any fox trotter
or Tennessee walker or anything, it
might just be a pure quarter horse, but
he be saddling by the time we gets home.
It's, In fact, when we started working
with the Peruvian horses, the first people
I went to were some of the Black people
in my community that were my patients.
And one of them, a guy named Buck Newton,
was he was in for pneumonia one day
and, and I went in to him, I said, "Mr.
Buck, can you help me figure out what
to do with these Peruvian horses?
They supposed to be saddling horses
and I don't know nothing about that."
He says, "Sit down right
here on this bed, young man.
I'll teach you everything
you need to know about that."
And so he did, he started
teaching me about it.
And then they, they realized, okay,
this white guy wants to learn this
stuff, so we'll help him, you know?
And, and they would see us riding
the Peruvian and they'd, they'd come
up to us and say, "He a stallion?"
"Mm-hmm, yeah."
"Can you breed my mare?"
You know?
I'd say, "Well, hell yeah.
No problem.
I think you'll like what
comes out of this," you know?
Yeah.
So, it's just, you know, the,
the, that's the world of horsemen.
You know, the, the real world-
Yeah ... of horsemen, people who don't
see color, they don't see difference
in culture, the, any of that stuff.
It's all fascinating to them
'cause you do it with a horse.
Exactly.
That's all I need to know, you know?
No,
Rupert Isaacson: absolutely.
It's such, I mean, the, the true horse
people are, as you say, it's, it's
like the horse is the ambassador.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we might be all these different
nations and then we all meet in the
common ground of the horse if we
are the right kind of horse person.
If we are not, then we factionalize
out- Yeah ... and we hold our little
territory over here and say, "No, I'm,
you know, a German dressage rider.
No, I'm only a western pleasure rider.
No, I'm only a whatever."
Yeah.
And I, you know, and I just talk
poo about the people over there.
It's- ... back to that thing about all
the old dead dudes, all of the old masters
were always these guys who had their feet
in many, many different cultures- Yeah
... were curious about everything, interested
in everything, spoke many languages and
wanted to understand, whether it was
within horses or within music or within
philosophy or all of the above, because
these guys were all-rounders, To have the
richest experience they possibly could.
And it, it never ceases to amaze me how
the horse wor- people in the horse world
can shrivel themselves into these little
bitter joyless little kind of silos.
Yeah.
When all of us got into horses for
one reason and one reason only, to...
Because we loved it.
Because it, because it, it
spoke to us with passion.
Because it made us feel better, basically.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then s- there are those people
who then follow that forever, and then
there are those people who somehow
end up creating a cage for themselves.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
Yeah.
You know?
That's always been a puzzle to me, too.
Yeah.
It's like, where, where did
your curiosity go, and why, why
isn't this interesting to you?
Oh, this is, they're different from me.
Well, w- but different
doesn't necessarily mean bad.
It can be kind of a neat thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, and also, if you
really are a horseman, if you really
are a musician, or you really are a
diesel mechanic, I mean, anything that
is a complex art, you know that you need
to constantly expand your repertoire.
That's it.
That's it.
You, you just, you know,
and, to, to, to master.
And you also know you'll never
master, but you always wanna be on
that road, because that's also where
the joy is if you love what you do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So- Yeah ... y- there are things
I may never get round to learning.
I, I may never learn to rope, but maybe
my friend Glen will teach me one day.
You know?
I may never learn to, to
really drive horses well, but
maybe someone will teach me.
But I would be absolutely there
for it if somebody shows up.
Yeah.
Because I'm a horseman.
I wanna know.
Yeah.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
Well, that was pretty obvious
to me the first time I met you,
that, that this guy is eat up with
horses, so We, w- we've always...
our, our relationship was
solidified within minutes
of the first time I saw you.
Indeed.
Rupert Isaacson: Indeed, indeed.
Well, I hope to continue it.
I hope to see you you know,
this is now March 2026, and I'll
be back out in Texas in April.
So I hope- Okay ... I, I hope
we'll be crossing paths there.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah ... we- Shoot
me a text or a message or something,
let me know what's going on and, and
we'll see if we can't cross paths.
I will
Rupert Isaacson: do that.
And, and that's kind of where I
want to bring it to now, Glen.
So people who are listening to
this, some of them will be saying,
"You know, I might, I might like to
go and learn something from that,
from that classical roping chariota
single-footing garrocha-using cowboy
doctor in, in College Station, Texas."
And by the way, anyone who's wa-
who's watching this in College
Station, Texas, it's very beautiful.
If you don't know Texas, Texas has all
these different zones of climate and
vegetation 'cause it's vast, and that
area of Central Texas, and I used to
live there, it's exquisitely beautiful.
There are parts of it that
look like English park.
It sort of goes- Yeah ... between looking
like English parkland and Botswana,
depending upon how much rain has fallen.
Yeah, yeah.
But the sweet spot is, like,
November and March, those- Yeah,
Glenn Cochran: you...
We've got, we- Yeah ... like somebody
said, we have three seasons in Texas.
We have, we have fall/winter
and winter/spring.
Winter- the fall/winter is called the
wet season, and that, the, the wet
refers to drizzling rain, cloudy days.
It goes from, like, December the 15th
up until, like, the first part of March.
And then, then we have the rainy
season, which usually starts in March.
We're not having much of one
this year, but just start
March, April, maybe up into May.
And, and somebody said,
"Well, how do you tell the wet
season from the rainy season?"
I said, "You just wait."
'Cause it goes from drizzle
to, like, torrential downpours.
Biblical
Rupert Isaacson: rains, yeah.
Glenn Cochran: Six inches
of rain in an hour.
I mean, you know- Yeah ... you ain't...
And, and then the, the real season,
the, the six to nine months, the rest
of the year is called the dry season.
It's like- Hot.
... they, they turn the tap off the 1st
of July, and you ain't gonna see
another drop of rain until December.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
That's right.
That's right.
But I would really encourage people...
So if, if, if people have not...
If you're listening to this, and
you might want to go and learn some
classical stuff, some Western stuff
some cowboy stuff with you, can
people come to you and learn, Glenn?
And is- Sure ... is there a way that...
How, how do they...
Do you have a website?
How do they, how do they contact you?
Glenn Cochran: Well, I
used to have a website.
I don't know what happened to it, but but
probably just look for me on Facebook.
I'm on there.
Okay.
And and just Facebook Messenger
or something like that.
So Glenn Cochran,
Rupert Isaacson: As in- Yeah
the Scottish way, C-O-C-H-R-A-N-E.
That's it.
But we- No E.
No E with the- We end with the N,
Glenn Cochran: yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Sorry, no E.
But we're gonna put that-
We're- ... put that link there.
We're, we're Scottish, not British.
Aye, well, you know, on
my f- on my father's side.
In my father's day, we never
dreamt of voiding the bowel.
We simply kept it in.
Tales from a Scottish fitting room.
I've a couple.
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
Oh.
A whole nother culture.
Yes, indeed.
A whole other culture.
Rupert Isaacson: So listen we
will put that there because
I think if peop- people...
I think people would love to
come out to your ranch and learn.
with you.
And that's often a bit of a closed world
for people because, you know, Texas, it's
so kind of the land is all private and
you sort of have to know people and- Yeah
it's not like the fur- where you
go further west and it's a lot
of big open BLM land and national
forest and that sort of thing.
Mm-hmm.
So you kind of actually do need to know
an individual who will take you in, and my
friends, that individual is sitting here.
It's, it's, it's Dr.
Glenn.
So I think I want to come
visit as well, Glenn.
Can I do that?
Glenn Cochran: Well,
you, you just plan on it.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
You plan on it.
But Ileana's gonna kill me if I do it
by myself, so I'm gonna have to do that
one- ... when I, when I bring her along.
She's, she's
Glenn Cochran: gotta come too.
Yeah, yeah.
I gotta have somebody
pretty and somebody ugly.
I'm not gonna tell you.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, you know, you know-
I know I can hold it up.
Gotta have that balance, yeah.
Glenn Cochran: All right.
Well, yeah- All right, my
friend ... we've got an event in
Caldwell on May the 2nd, which will
be- Mm-hmm ... basically a work and
equitation based think like a cow clinic.
I'll be taking some cows up there.
We have a covered arena at
Caldwell, the Saddle Club Arena,
and we're- Like a cow clinic
we've been doing this for about two
years, so- So many jokes you can make-
... people can come ... with that, but hey.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So, so May, when is that?
May?
May the 2nd.
May 2nd.
And are you
Glenn Cochran: doing that,
is that an annual thing?
Yeah, we've, we've done it
for about two years now.
We tried to get something
going spring and fall, so we-
we'll eventually get our- Okay
get things together.
But we're, for sure we're
gonna do it May the 2nd.
We've got the arena
scheduled and everything.
So, Good ... if somebody wants to work
with, with some cows and particularly
work with one of the best cutting
horse trainers in Texas not me- the, he
Cletus Hulling will be there, and- Right
and we're gonna, we're gonna start
you with, you know, this is how you,
how you l- teach your horse to work
with cows, so then you can do the
work and equitation team penning
thing that, that they need to do.
So.
Fantastic.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
Yeah.
Well, we- we'll put the...
We'll, we'll get all the, the
links in there and let people know.
And in the meantime, Glenn
thank you so much for coming on.
It's been a fabulous conversation.
Well, I've, I've really enjoyed it.
It's lovely being
Glenn Cochran: here.
Rupert, <|diarize|>MuchÃsimas gracias.
Ah.
Y venga para visitar con nosotros.
Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Avec plaisir, mon ami.
So yes, we will, we will, we will do this.
Okay ... and then I hope I'll
see you, yeah, this coming month.
Yeah, you just let me know.
I will.
I'll work out
Glenn Cochran: some way to get there.
Rupert Isaacson: And we're gonna
be look- just breaking the PF
down into a thousand pieces- Yeah.
... and looking at 10 different ways in.
Okay.
And perhaps some beer might be involved
Glenn Cochran: Yes, it
Rupert Isaacson: can definitely
Glenn Cochran: be
Rupert Isaacson: That would
be, that would be a mercy
Glenn Cochran: Beer and
perhaps a little wine.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, I
have- Perhaps a little wine.
Perhaps even tequila
Glenn Cochran: Yeah.
Yeah, tequila.
Yeah.
We got you covered all the way around
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
All right.
Well then I, I, I, I know I'll
be heading for the watering hole.
There you go Okay, Glenn, then thank you.
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