History

While tracking wild mustangs in Nevada as a boy, Monty Roberts observed a nonverbal communication between the horses, a silent language he would later call “Equus.” Monty incorporates “Equus” into his nonviolent training approach called Join-Up®.

Monty Roberts first developed Join-Up to stop the cycle of violence typically accepted in traditional horse breaking. Convinced there must be a more effective and gentle method, Monty created these consistent set of principles using the horse’s inherent methods of communication and herd behavior. The result is a willing partnership in which the horse’s performance can flourish to its full potential, rather than exist within the boundaries of obedience. These principles are valuable tools to understanding what motivates horse behavior and increasing effectiveness in any application.

When Discovery Channel inquired about filming a documentary of Monty Roberts’ work, we thought it would be about horse training. But back in 2010 there was a growing concern in the military community that Post Traumatic Stress was a cause for the suicide rate of 22 deaths per day in the United States.

Horse Sense and Soldiers was released on the Discovery Military Channel in September 2010 and the phones at Monty’s office began ringing asking for a program as seen on the documentary to help veterans and their families cope with the effects of Post Traumatic Stress. Monty Roberts and his team immediately began creating a program with input from counselors and doctors who were experienced with Post Traumatic Stress – and Horse Sense & Healing was born.

The Horse Sense & Healing program has been helping veterans, their families and now first responders too, overcome past emotional injuries and learn to trust, communicate emotions and build resiliency to cope after deployment. Like the horse, a flight animal, these heroes have found it difficult to trust again. The military developed boot camps to train for war but very little is done to re-train our service personnel to reenter domestic environments.

The center of the experience of these 3 clinics is achieving Join-Up® with a horse. Join-Up is a form of communication between a horse and a human, based on a body language of gestures, like signing for the deaf. Leading up to the Join-Up, many skills of emotional control, focus exercises and breathing are shared. Learning why the horse is a uniquely qualified species to help heal, the participants leave the farm with a sense of peace and hope.

Monty Roberts, our founder, is known all over the globe for his work to end violence used in the training of horses, and with people. Horse Sense & Healing uses a combination of his groundbreaking horsemanship, and its parallels to Motivational Interviewing, to provide Veterans with tools to overcome past emotional injuries and learn to trust, communicate emotions, and build resiliency to better cope after deployment.

Monty Roberts has been encouraged by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of England with the award of the Membership in The Royal Victorian Order. The Queen also honored him by becoming Patron of Join-Up International in 2012.

In May 2020 results from our four-year science trial were published. Data was collected over 3 years in this prospective, non-interventional, single center study. The results show breakthrough evidence of the effectiveness of Horse Sense & Healing in helping participants overcome the effects of posttraumatic stress. Participants had been deployed to 15 different conflict zones on their last tour of duty, most commonly Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam.