{"id":313213,"date":"2026-08-04T07:36:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T07:36:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/313213\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T07:36:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T07:36:09","slug":"monty-roberts-horse-whisperer-and-close-friend-of-the-late-queen-elizabeth-dies-aged-91","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/313213\/","title":{"rendered":"Monty Roberts: \u2018Horse whisperer\u2019 and close friend of the late Queen Elizabeth dies aged 91"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Renowned horse<\/a> trainer Monty Roberts has died at his farm in Solvang, California<\/a>. He was 91.<\/p>\n

Roberts was known the world over for his nonviolent method of training<\/a> and his \u2018join-up\u2019 technique, which uses gestures and eye contact to gain a horse\u2019s trust in under an hour.<\/p>\n

His daughter, Debbie Roberts Loucks, announced his death in a social media post.<\/p>\n

She told the New York Times that the cause was complications from an autoimmune disease.<\/p>\n

Roberts began riding as a small child and quickly became a Hollywood stunt double, standing in for the likes of Mickey Rooney and Charlton Heston.<\/p>\n

He started to develop his training method after watching his father, who was also a horse trainer, use a conventional fear-based approach to breaking a horse.<\/p>\n

\"MontyMonty Roberts on horseback at Flag is Up farm (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

He went on to study animal science at California Polytechnic State University and in 1966 founded Flag Is Up Farms in Solvang.<\/p>\n

In 1989, the late Queen Elizabeth II<\/a> \u2013 an avid horsewoman \u2013 asked Roberts to come to the UK to demonstrate his training method to her stable staff.<\/p>\n

The pair became firm friends<\/a>, and the Queen urged Roberts to write a book about his method, which was published in 1996 as The Man Who Listens to Horses.<\/p>\n

The pair remained in contact for the rest of Elizabeth\u2019s life, and in 2011 she appointed him an Honorary Member of the Royal Victorian Order for \u201cservices to Her Majesty\u2019s racing establishment\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"MontyMonty Roberts encourages a horse to run off its fear (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

He attended her funeral in 2022, and in 2023, a documentary named The Cowboy and the Queen was released, detailing their friendship.<\/p>\n

Roberts said that the Queen \u201ccompletely changed my life\u201d.<\/p>\n

His daughter, Roberts Loucks, wrote that she was announcing his death with \u201cprofound sadness\u201d.<\/p>\n

She went on: \u201cFor the world, he was known as the man who listens to horses. To me, he was simply Dad, a man of extraordinary kindness, unwavering integrity, and an unshakable belief that trust could accomplish what force never could.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile our hearts are broken, we also find comfort in knowing that his legacy lives on every time someone chooses compassion over force, listens before asking, and seeks a better partnership with their horse.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":313214,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[118380,9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-313213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-lax04-us-horses-roberts-rides","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313213\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/313214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}