Paradise woman dances with horses

Matt Unrau

Cheryl Burt doesn't want people to call her a horse whisperer. Beside the fact that she labels the movie as more of a love story than a film about horses, she never finds herself actually whispering to her horses.

"You could call me a horse communicator. You could call me a horse relationship person, but I couldn't say I whisper to horse," says Burt.

Although, she doesn't label herself as a horse whisperer five minutes spent observing her with a horse and one becomes amazed at the unspoken understanding between the two. With simple nudges, weight shifts or a casual flick of her rope she can get her horse to do almost anything.

For lack of a better term Burt is a horse trainer on her ranch, called Equivisions Farm, north of Paradise. On top of training horses Burt along with her husband Dennis run the newly made Equine Trail Challenge Course on which they held their first competition two weeks ago.

An equine challenge course is a new type of course for horses and riders that is gaining much popularity in the United States and consists of various obstacles that can demonstrate the level of trust between a horse and rider more so than other competitions that measure how high a horse can jump or how fast they can run in circles.

The course in Paradise consists of approximately 25 obstacles including a teeter-totter, an elevated path of dirt-filled tractor tires and various jumps and drop offs. Burt designed the challenges specifically to simulate real-world obstacles that she would find out in the mountain trails surrounding her property. For example, she made one obstacle into an eroded trail and has others that simulate puddles or streams.

As she walks her horse around the course her eyes are shining with enthusiasm and new ideas. She says she gets new ideas all the time and plans to install closer to 50 obstacles when it is all said and done.

As far as she knows it is only one of two courses in Montana.

Growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, Burt is far away from her roots in almost every way. She first developed her love of horses through her aunt and uncle who owned horses. With pride Burt reiterates that her uncle would say the horses always stood well for her when she would hold them during a hair trim. “You either have the horse gene in your blood or you don’t,” says Burt.

After college she worked on a horse farm in Oxford where they raised, trained and bred horses along with having a veterinary clinic. It was there that Burt met her mentor in the form of Major Robert J. Borg, the only person to both train horses in the Olympics and compete in the same one. “The things that he taught me were just amazing,” says Burt. The Major taught Burt everything about horses for six years, while she worked at the farm.

All together Burt has been training horses since 1978, but it wasn’t until 2005 that Burt moved to Paradise and in 2007 began to work on her ultimate challenge course. A course that accomplishes principally two things for Burt, teaching them to think and teaching them to dance. “If we can teach horses to think rather than react, it can be safer,” says Burt. “You make it more like a dance than a wrestling match.”

This dance is what perfectly describes Burt’s philosophy and relationship with a horse. She stresses that she’ll never force her horse to do anything and waits for the horse to be comfortable and trust her before executing an obstacle. This goes hand in hand with a dance where the follower needs trust the leader that he’ll take care of her. On top of this her gentle nudges and shifts of weight echo the interactions between two dancers.

Her ability to train animals doesn’t stop at horses either as she has two dogs that she can make and motions from 20 feet away and have them instantly obey her. “How we are with our animals and our kids show us how we are as a person,” says Burt. Her values and positivity is what show up most when seeing her with animals.

Even with an uncanny command of her animals and an impressive ability to breeze through the obstacles on her horse, Burt still downplays the importance of the obstacles. “All of this stuff isn’t about the tasks, but the relationship,” says Burt. “I’m developing the relationship.” This relationship and this communication is what motivates Burt to train other people’s horses into something more than just a “four-legged motorcycle.” It’s the happiness she has when her horse fully understands what she wants that Burt wants to give to other riders.