Dubai: Over a billion homes across 150 territories could tune into Dubai World Cup night, but one household that will be watching the start of the UAE Derby that little bit more intently will be the home of horse whisperer Malan du Toit.
The 57-year-old from Cape Town, South Africa, was flown into Dubai by trainer Mike de Kock on emergency measures just a week before the big race to salvage the hopes of his horse Fawree.
The three-year-old colt, who has only raced three times, finished second and first in his first two appearances, and was considered fourth favourite for the UAE Derby on World Cup night, behind Thunder Snow, Epicuris and Master Plan.
That was until, during his third race — the Listed Al Bastakiya at Meydan on March 4 — he bolted from the gates before the starter had pushed his button and dislodged his jockey Bernard Fayd’herbe to finish the race riderless.
The incident meant that Fawree would have to pass a stalls test before being able to compete in future races, leaving his UAE Derby hopes hanging in the balance with only two weeks to go.
“This was nobody’s fault,” said De Kock at the time of the incident. “Fawree walked into the pens twice before with a hood fitted. It has come down to perfect timing. The moment the hood is removed he jumps, and that has worked twice. This time the hood was removed a split second before the starter pushed his button. Fawree lunged forward just that split second too soon.
“We have to call on the horse whisperer now, we have a lot to do and only two weeks to do it. We will have to prove to the stewards that Fawree is tractable so that he can be considered for the Derby.”
‘The Horse Whisperer’ conjures images of the novel turned 1998 film of the same name starring Robert Redford, where a man reads a horse’s mind and telepathically communicates with it, mystically transforming the animal from wild to placid before the owner’s eyes, ala Crocodile Dundee. But Du Toit is quick to distance himself from movie misrepresentations of his role.
Complete fiction
“It’s complete fiction,” he told Gulf News. “I’m not a physic, I don’t read the minds of horses and I don’t talk to them, in fact they talk to me through body language,” but that’s where his similarities with Redford stop.
“Everything I do is based on the science of animal learning processes and science teaches us that horses learn slowly and step-by-step. A horse has a minute brain that can basically only be put into two modes: flight or fight, but predominantly flight.
“The trick is to contain that flight response until the gates open, through training. Anyone can make a horse do something but the art is to make the horse willingly accept it.”
So how does he do that?
“We start with basic ground control. I have a special halter that goes around the horse, where I can apply pressure and release it using a rope.
“I’ll apply pressure until he begins to move in the direction I want and then just as he transfers his weight from say his front to his back I’ll release the pressure as reward. Then we learn through association. If a horse, like Fawree, has a traumatic association with his surroundings like the starting gate, we have to make new associations.
“So, we take him back to the scene of his accident, and repeat the process of loading and starting a race, with loud speakers blaring and other horses present alongside him to replicate a race day environment.
“There’s a lot of stimulation to distract him but the idea is that he keeps focusing on me and forgets about his surroundings.”
Other desensitisation methods include getting the horse used to seeing a jockey appear from out of the blind spot at the back of his head using something as rudimentary as a mop being waved around behind him, and getting the horse used to accidental contact in sensitive areas that might startle him while being loaded.
Du Toit is a former pastor, who had no knowledge of horses until he met his wife Finnie, a former dressage competitor, 27 years ago at the age of 30. After that he taught himself the profession through reading books on the subject and trial and error. He still has no formal qualifications in the field, but is now considered South Africa’s leading equine behavioural therapist with a 99 per cent success rate. His greatest success story was Variety Club, another troublesome horse that went on to win the 2014 Godolphin Mile on Dubai World Cup night after his intervention.
Learnt through experience
“I’m not an academic but I’ve learnt through experience that you need a beginning point and an objective and the more steps in between the better.
“The horse has to understand that to go from A to Z, you have to go from A to B to C and then go back to B. You’ll end up at Z and it may take time and repetition, because there’s always regression in a learning process, but you’ll get there.”
His degree, while training to become a pastor, included theology and psychology.
“Theology taught me to take care of creation, while psychology had many chapters on animal behaviour, from Pavlov’s Dog to BF Skinner’s experiments, so it all helped.
“The thing that grates is that people say anyone could do this if they just had the time, but they can’t, it takes a certain feel from experience to know when the horse is ready to move onto the next step.
“I’m also very aware, having been taught many a lesson from horses, not to take anything for granted, as after all that training they can still revert to type.
“So the question everybody will be asking is does this guy really make a difference?”
And the proof will be in the pudding.
Du Toit worked with Fawree for almost four hours a day, two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, for a week, and he was present when the horse passed his stall loading test last weekend.
Fawree is now allowed to compete in the UAE Derby, but on race day Du Toit isn’t allowed on the track as he doesn’t have the correct UAE race permits, meaning he had to transfer his methods onto the race starter Shane Ryan and his team.
He returned to South Africa last week and will now watch the race on TV, but hopefully not from behind the sofa.
