?Does not pay attention; occasionally kicks and bites; plays badly with others,? could be the report card for a naughty child, but it describes many of the horses that trainer Chris Irwin deals with on a daily basis.

Mr. Irwin is the author of ?Horses Don?t Lie? and has another book on the way, ?Dancing with The Dark Horse?. The equine behaviour expert from Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Canada was on the Island in January to give demonstrations and clinics for local problem horses and their owners and trainers. reporter Jessie Moniz met with Mr. Irwin and several local riders at the National Equestrian Centre on a cold, wet night to watch one of his demonstrations.

?I haven?t met the two horses I will be working with,? said Mr. Irwin shortly before the demonstration started. ?Lisa Dolan organised the event and put the word out that we were looking for horses with issues. So, what I will be doing tonight will be working with the two horses and their owners.?

He likened what he did to marriage counselling or family therapy, and said it was all based on horse psychology.

?Horses don?t communicate verbally; like the deaf they use sign language,? said Mr. Irwin. ?What we will be doing is if the horses are frightened or nervous we will be communicating to them whatever is needed to help them become calm and confident.?

Before doing the demonstration, Mr. Irwin was briefed on his two equine clients? problems. One of the horses had been recently gelded and was aggressive, and the other horse was young and had attention deficit disorder.

?Coca is nippy and throws his feet out and charges other horses,? said event organiser and local horse owner Lisa Dolan. ?He is angry and aggressive. The other one, Linus, is a new horse here. He is just young. He is four. His owner, Harriet Richold, is just getting to know him.?

Mr. Irwin said sometimes, with new or young horses, the owner or trainer doesn?t know what issues there are until he starts ?poking around? with the horse.

Eventually, the two problem horses were led out into the ring with their owners. For those who were expecting rearing horses, flying hooves and damaged trainers, this particular demonstration was a bit of a letdown. The horses? bad behaviour was not immediately obvious to the untrained eye.

Mr. Irwin worked mostly with Linus while his wife worked with Coca, belonging to Erin Smith. His attention focused more on the bad behaviour of the horse owners, than the horse itself.

Mr. Irwin had Mrs. Richold lead her horse back and forth holding the reins so that he didn?t toss his head back and forth, or try to invade her body space with his head.

?Educated riders contradict themselves all the time,? he said. ?For example, we are told never to pull on the horse?s head, aren?t we, but Harriet just pulled on the horse?s head. If you are riding your horse you would want the horse to bend around our inside leg, wouldn?t we? Both these horses are constantly bending into their own legs.

?What we are going to be looking at tonight, the media calls it horse whispering. I call it dressage on the ground.?

Mr. Irwin said respect from a horse can not be achieved through bullying from the trainer.

?It has to be earned,? said Mr. Irwin. ?Whether they are frightened, angry or confused or whether they are just attention deficit and can?t focus, whatever their ?issues? are, sometimes horses are aggressive towards people, sometimes they are just disinterested in people.

?Either way, I am essentially training the people so they can understand how a horse really thinks; how to communicate with a horse using their body language.?

Mr. Irwin explained that horses and humans often miscommunicate because humans are predators and horses are a prey species.

?We get along really well with cats and dogs because we are innately predators,? he said. ?People are often unaware of the distinction between how predators behave and how prey behave.?

He said many horse owners often fall into the trap of training their horse like a dog, and don?t get very far.

He demonstrated how a simple thing like the angle of a torso to the horse?s head could cause him to lose focus and toss his head, because he interprets it as the move of a predator trying to catch him.

?Very often people will say ?I didn?t do this to the horse?,? said Mr. Irwin. ??I just bought this horse?, or ?I just rescued the horse?.

?We don?t necessarily need to be the original cause of the horse?s issues, but until we really understand the language of prey, we are not helping, we are exacerbating the problem.?

In his book, ?Horses Don?t Lie?, Mr. Irwin wrote, ?Control has become a bit of a dirty, politically incorrect word these days but we need to come out of denial and admit the truth, that control is, in fact, exactly what we need. Whether you are a rider, or a driver or a vet wanting to handle a horse smoothly, this is about control.?

He said that for the most part, most horses can be ?saved?, although the term ?saved? was relative.

?It depends on how extremely bad the issues are,? said Mr. Irwin. ?Like with people, the issues have their source in both the nature of the horse and also the nurturing or lack of that the horse has got. I generalise horses into three categories. That is not by breed such as thoroughbred, Arabian or Morgan. It is ?passive, passive aggressive, or aggressive?.?

He said a wild mustang that had never been exposed to people could be as passive as a sheep, but another horse could be as aggressive as a bull in a rodeo.

?A bull is also a prey animal, but it doesn?t run away from predators, it attacks predators,? said Mr. Irwin. ?Horses encompass the full spectrum. The most dangerous horses are the frightened ones. They will run right through a fence with you on their backs.?

He said the last time he did a demonstration in Bermuda, two years ago, he dealt with a very aggressive horse.

?This horse was infamous for putting people in the hospital,? said Mr. Irwin. ?Within 40 minutes he was just a puppy dog. It did not take aggressive manhandling. I did not have to bully him into minding me. His aggression was based on not understanding what people want. Tonight you will see that horses are reacting from the mixed signals from us.?

He estimated that 80 to 85 percent of horses are passive-aggressive, meaning they will be frightened or angry depending on what they see in people. Ten to 15 percent are truly aggressive, and around five per cent are ?just neurotic basket cases?.

?Horses are always willing to settle down and accept authority if that authority is not abusive,? he said. ?It is one in 10,000 horses that are just evil.?

Being a horse whisperer is not all sugar cubes and fun. Mr. Irwin has received 38 fractures since he started.

?My learning curve was such that when I was in my early 20s it was the macho ego that was willing to take on these hard horses,? he said.

?I was stubborn enough that when they hurt me I?d be in the hospital trying to figure out what went wrong.

?To put it into perspective, horses when they are competing with each other to develop their hierarchy their communication with each other is primarily competitive. Just about everything they have to say with each other is about establishing and re-establishing their pecking order. The actions and reactions, the competitions or games they play are very much like martial arts.

?What I will be doing here tonight, with horse psychology, I will be playing horse games by horse rules using my body language. It will be physical, it won?t be abusive, but at times it will need to be aggressive.?

He said horses are always looking for who is the master, master in the sense of a martial arts master rather than a slave master.

?When horses think master they think more along the lines of the martial artist, ?I bow to you, because you are superior with skill?.

?Where they start biting and striking is where they see the passive aggressiveness of a human being, who wants to be dominant, but is visibly afraid of them. That happens a lot with horses.?

However, Mr. Irwin said he can?t fix a horse, he can only teach the trainer or owner to use better techniques and body language. He can also figure out where the horse lies in the passive to aggressive spectrum, and the level of the horse?s sense of dominance.

?What you will see tonight are horses that go from being aggressive or frightened, to focusing in on me,? he said. ?They will start bowing and when they do that they are signalling that you have found the balance in your competitive behaviour to earn their respect with your skills, but also to earn their trust because while you were good, you were never a bully.?

Mr. Irwin came late to horse training compared to most people in the business. He did not learn to ride horses until he was a teenager.

He grew up near Toronto, Canada in a dysfunctional family. When he was 19 years old he went to work at a racetrack in Seattle, Washington. It was there, immersed in life with the thoroughbred horses, that he found his calling.

At the racetrack Mr. Irwin learned that the ?bond? between horses and people left much to be desired.

He took up training and driving draft horse teams, and became a highly respected as a ?teamster?.

By his early 30s, Mr. Irwin has achieved 18 US National Championships in both riding and driving events with Nevada?s wild mustangs ? arguably the most difficult horses to train in any capacity. Mr. Irwin developed a reputation for being able to turn around difficult, ?last-chance? horses.

Today, his methods have been highlighted in television shows such as ?Canada AM,? ?The Discovery Channel,? ?Mustang: America?s Wild Horse,? and the PBS show ?Horse N?Around.?

A few weeks after the demonstration, the approached Mrs. Richold to find out if the work with Mr. Irwin had been worth it. Mrs. Richold has been riding horses for over 60 years.

?My horse Linus is young, that is his biggest problem, and I am old and that adds to it,? laughed Mrs. Richold. ?He doesn?t have any nasty problems as far as biting or kicking. He is just young and inexperienced. That was the major reason I took him to the demonstration.?

Mrs. Richold said she did feel it had helped her and Linus.

?I would like to do one of his clinics away,? she said. ?You are supposed to do three day sessions in one year to be certified to be a trainer in training. That is teaching you the actual body language of the horse.?

She said since the demonstration workshop, she has become more aware of her body and its relation to her horse?s body.

?He wasn?t bad to begin with,? she said. ?I did practise one day in the paddock and I did get him to come to me and follow me around. But I wasn?t sure of what I was doing.

?As Mr. Irwin says you can?t fake it with horses. I definitely feel like it was worth it. I can?t believe that I wasn?t more aware of the things that Mr. Irwin was pointing out.?