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To city folks and Hollywood types, he was the original " Horse Whisperer." To riders and fans he was the " horse's lawyer," a pioneer who eschewed harsh bronco-busting techniques for a patient word and soft stroke. But in his own mind, Tom Dorrance was just a horseman with an understanding. And when he died Wednesday in Monterey at the age of 93, he'd spent a lifetime improving communication between human and animal. His revolutionary technique of training horses influenced generations of horsemen and spawned a popular following through books and a movie.
Dorrance was born in 1910 to a ranching family in Enterprise, Ore. As the sixth of eight children, he learned quickly the " need to cooperate," he once told the New York Times. On the ranch, he told the paper in an interview, his small build made him realize he couldn't command a horse by out-muscling it. " He once told me he was usually on his own on his parents' ranch, and so he had to work things out as best he could with as little turmoil as possible," said John Saint Ryan, a horseman Dorrance mentored.
To his sister, Ethel, he had some special connection: " He just seemed to speak to the horses, and they spoke to him." After he worked more than three decades on the ranch, the family sold it in the mid-1940s. He spent the next 20 years or so leading a nomadic life. He worked on friends' ranches in Oregon, Nevada, and Montana and spent winters on a relative's ranch in Salinas.
In the mid-1960s, he settled in California and married his wife, Margaret. They lived in La Grange, Merced, Gustine, and Hollister, and they settled in Salinas in the early 1990s.
Relatives remember him as quiet, but with a droll streak. He would entertain young nephew Steve by reciting humorous cowboy poetry as they rode back to relatives' Mount Toro ranch on chilly evenings. One Christmas, he gave 8-year-old Steve an electric shaver. Some days he'd lean back in his chair, put his arms up and form two claws with his hands. That was the signal for the kids to come over and get a back scratch.
" He'd do the same thing with horses," said Steve, now 48. That's because Tom Dorrance figured he could get more out of horses through patient handling -- known by outsiders as " gentling" -- than by breaking their spirit.
He progressed patiently in getting to know a horse. He stroked it, sensed its nervousness and respected its space. He introduced blankets, ropes, and techniques slowly, never forcing the issue. If a horse resisted, he went back to square one and started again. He used gentle but firm body language to guide a horse he was riding. And he believed in letting horses be horses.
Nephew Steve recalled once having a hard time controlling the family's 6-year-old bay quarter horse, Hoskey. While they were returning home at leisure one day, the horse speeded up in its zest to get back to the barn.
" I was holding him up with the reins, but the more I did that the more bothered he got," Steve Dorrance remembers. " Most guys would have been like me, just hanging on and pulling on him." Uncle Tom told him to do just the opposite: Let him run. So he let the horse gallop about 50 yards ahead, and then had him gallop back. After half a dozen rounds of that, the horse had had enough. " He was plumb content," he said. Tom " really thought quite a bit about the horse and what the horse needed." Such an attitude revolutionized horse training and was captured in his 1987 book, " True Unity: Willing Communication Between Horse and Human."
Never a showman, Dorrance remained low-key. It took protégé Ray Hunt, who took such educational horse-training " clinics" on the road, and trainer Buck Brannaman to popularize the technique. News of the soft-touch movement spread. Dorrance and his colleagues were featured in People magazine and the New York Times. The technique took on an almost mystical tone in Nicholas Evans' 1995 novel " The Horse Whisperer" and the 1998 film adaptation starring Robert Redford. Redford used Brannaman, Dorrance's colleague, as a technical adviser.
Though Dorrance appreciated the exposure his techniques were getting, he was ambivalent about the book. Steve Dorrance said he never knew where they got the name " horse whisperer." And those close to him say it didn't always present Tom's world the way he saw it. " He doesn't like fiction," said his wife, Margaret. " The book was fiction."
Nephew Steve recalled his uncle receiving a signed first edition of the book from Evans. " Tom got to reading it, and he underlined with a pencil and marker the stuff he didn't like," he said. " There was quite a bit of swearing, and that really bothered him. He got so far... and then he threw it into the wood stove."
He turned down invitations to the premiere and a private screening, relatives and colleagues say. " He was in it for the horse," Saint Ryan said.
In his late years, his memory stayed sharp. Tom Dorrance was a rancher who knew the names and tag numbers of his dozens of cattle. So when Steve would stop in two or three times a week to visit, they would -- in Tom's words -- talk about horses long gone and dead.
They'd discuss what they were like, what they'd learned from them. Steve would re-ride his horses many times in their conversations. Uncle Tom would recall the horse's personality and remind his nephew of techniques to try.
" There were things that were hard for me to grasp," he said, in his youth. The advice " really wasn't going to benefit that horse long gone and dead. " But maybe some other horse I'd be on."
Alex Friedrich can be reached at 648-1172 or by email: afriedrich@montereyherald.com
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