Bern Miller, lean as a weathered fence post in his Wrangler jeans and tall black boots, leads a brown-spotted Appaloosa by a halter rope in a slow circle in his arena near Bridgeport. He speaks to the horse, Lakota, in soft, encouraging tones and points to the well-trampled ground. Lakota stops and bends one front leg. Bern makes an approving clicking sound with his mouth. Lakota kneels and settles to the ground. Bern gives her a treat.

Using clicker training, 78-year-old Bern can teach any horse to lie down within a month. It’s one of many techniques Bern has drawn on to encourage and teach natural horsemanship, a gentler and safer form of training for horse and rider, in Nebraska’s Panhandle.

In Bern’s barnyard, colorful peafowl roam the yard, occasionally breaking the rural silence with piercing cries. The peacocks trail their metallic blue and green tail feathers in an extravagant train twice their body length, now and then going into full feathered display. The afternoon sun highlights the vibrant colors and eye-shaped spots.

Bern lives in a house set among corrals and shaded by a grove of towering cottonwoods with his wife Kay. His original paintings decorate the walls of the cozy home. Bern was an art and history teacher. His artwork depicts horses, horsemanship and the American West. Some pieces are abstract. As a teacher, Bern encouraged his students to explore different styles and techniques. Bern applies this same
out-of-the-box thinking to every aspect of his life. 

Bern and Kay raised three boys; all have grown up and become artists. Today, he runs natural horsemanship clinics with Kay and a like-minded trainer named Andrea “Annie” Rosentrater Mills, who has stables and an indoor arena north of Bayard.

To understand natural horsemanship techniques and develop clinics, Bern dug into the past. He looked back centuries, as far back as 360 BC to a text by Greek cavalry officer Xenophon, who detailed training war horses with emphasis on praise rather than punishment. Bern learned from Assyrian, Mongol and Muslim
warriors, European knights, Spanish
vaqueros from the time of Hernan Cortes and World War II horse soldiers.

He also learned much from Native American horsemanship. Lakota Sioux and Comanche trained horses to lie down so that if a rider was injured in battle or accident and unable to stand, the rider could remount. Plains tribes also mastered bridleless and jaw rope methods.

Bern incorporates all of these lessons in his clinics. He trains horses to respond to body language, such as leg pressure, weight shifting and toe pointing. Working with horses, he uses the same philosophy he once used with kids. It’s the teacher’s responsibility to make it positive and productive – not punishing. That means swapping out some of the traditional horse-riding tools, like the whip, for a
horseman’s stick.

Natural horsemanship training is a
methodical process requiring patience and simple gear. One of the main tools is a horseman’s stick, a 3- to 4-foot foot fiberglass rod with a length of rope on the end. It is not a striking instrument.

The stick is an extension of a human arm. It provides more reach and emphasis to a rider’s movements. With his stick, Bern can command his horse’s direction and speed simply by how he holds it. He’ll start with the stick tip on the ground. If the horse doesn’t respond to hand commands, he’ll raise it 6 inches off the ground for emphasis; raising it incrementally only if necessary.

The idea, he said, is to train the horse to respond to the lightest command. “Natural horsemanship is about being easier on the horse and easier on the rider,” he said.

Not everything Miller has tried has been a success. Mounted archery didn’t go over well. Neither did garrocha, an equestrian art form that involves a 12- to 14-foot pole or lance, originally used by Spanish vaqueros to steer and control
cattle.

Those trainings were never the priority anyway. Bern and Kay learned about natural horsemanship as a response to addressing a tragedy in their community. 

 

THE TELEPHONE RANG in the kitchen. When Bern answered, he knew something was wrong. His wife spoke to him in a tremulous, breaking voice. It was the only time in her decades-long emergency-room career that Kay, trained and experienced at remaining cool and unemotional in the face of trauma, called home in tears.

A 13-year-old girl had died from injuries suffered in a horse-related accident. The girl’s family, which previously owned a gentle aged horse, had purchased a young quarter horse. The seller assured the family it had received training. The girl mounted the haltered horse bareback. The horse broke into a run across a highway, where the girl fell, striking her head on the pavement.

There were other accidents, too, but this one pushed the Millers into the educational arena. “That’s when we decided something had to be done,” Bern said. The girl’s death compelled the Millers to research safer, easier ways to start horses.

Around 2003, Bern and Kay started
attending natural horsemanship clinics
in Fort Collins and along the Front Range. Then they started putting on clinics
themselves.

“None of us thought we were the right person for the job, but somebody had
to do something,” Bern said.

Annie Mills drapes her body over a horse in her arena near Bayard. Bern
and a group of others watch as Mills demonstrates the Jeffery Method, a
century-old step-by-step horse training
that uses behavioral principles and
positive reinforcement.

The diminutive Mills leads her horse to a two-step stool, places her hands on his back and lifts herself so her midsection is over the horse’s withers. She hangs briefly then lowers herself. The braid down her back bounces. This is a progression of putting more and more of herself on the horse. It’s a progression of trust.

Mills grew up riding on a farm near
Elsie and has been training horses since she was a teenager. Now in her 30s, Mills has done equine-assisted therapy in a prison and was a farrier. She moved to
Bayard and joined Bern and Kay in
putting on clinics in 2006.

She describes Bern as a Renaissance man, “but I’d also say he’s a pioneer.” Bern was instrumental in establishing the first natural horsemanship club in the Panhandle, and he helped her start the first club for positive-reinforcement training. The two often put their heads together to work out horse-related problems.

“If I’m struggling teaching, he’ll give me ideas,” she said. “Or I’ll get excited about something in horsemanship, and I’ll share it. We bounce ideas back and forth.”

Also assembled the day Mills demonstrates are Kay, once as much a rider as Bern but now grounded by arthritis; Aly Dusatko of Alliance, who clicker trains her former racehorse, Cursor, an 8-year-old thoroughbred; Megan Reimann, a rancher and trick trainer from Hay Springs; Rebecca Kolle of Antioch, an English riding coach; Jenna Croswell, an English riding student from Alliance, who owns a 3-year-old barrel-racing
palomino; and Mill’s 11-year-old son, Kyler, who assists his mom by pitching hay to the horses and helping with chores.

The gathering reflects the value both Bern and Mills bring to such an event. Bern has experience; Mills draw younger people. They’ve both studied and thought deeply about horses and training techniques. Mills is in tune with new sources of knowledge to inform her approach.

 “They’re the new school,” Bern said. “I look at it like I’m a founding father of all this and she’s more aware of the new things. She starts talking about some of the horse psychology and I can’t keep up with her.”

Even though natural horsemanship is safer, it isn’t risk-free. Even Bern has suffered some bumps and bruises, not to mention a little bit of wounded pride.

Presenting his first seminar on natural horsemanship in 2005 in Harrison, Bern was bucked off in front of a large group gathered to see him demonstrate horse-handling methods.

“He cut loose to bucking and just drilled me right into the dirt. It was the hardest-buck-off I ever had, and it was right in front of all these people,” Bern said.

The crowd of cowboys, cowgirls and ranchers was stunned. “It got real quiet,” Bern said. “I knew what they were thinking.” Embarrassed, he dusted himself off and did “a bit of groundwork,” calming the horse and leading it in circles, before hoisting himself back in the saddle and continuing with the seminar.

The horse was “green,” a term used for untrained or partially trained horses. “He had a history of bucking, and I was trying to show techniques I’d been using to get him to calm down,” Bern said.

What he hadn’t taken into consideration was that the horse had never been spurred before. Bern’s touch had been light, but it had been enough to rattle the horse and set him off.

Back in the saddle, Bern questioned whether or not he should be teaching other people horsemanship if he couldn’t even stay on his mount. Then, addressing the crowd, he laughed and said he was ashamed and embarrassed. 

The people assembled wouldn’t hear it. It had been an excellent demonstration, they said. Bern had shown everyone what to do if a horse bucked you off.

He didn’t lose his temper. He didn’t punish the animal. Bern kept cool, worked with the horse and got right back on.