Taming Spirited Horses

In a calm and steady voice, Darryl “DJ” Bennett Jr. talks to the spirited stallion at the end of the rope he’s holding in a corral in Lufkin, Texas (pop. 32,709). “Whoa, boy, easy,” says Bennett, 16. “Look at me.”

The horse watches Bennett intently, their faces 2 feet apart, and waits for his trainer’s cues. When the teen makes a smooching sound, the horse walks in a circle around him. After a few rounds, Bennett slaps his own leg and the horse breaks into a trot. Again and again, Bennett communicates with smooches and smacks and soft-spoken words, and the horse responds.

The strong-willed stallion wasn’t so cooperative three months earlier.

“This stud was as mean as the devil. He ran at me with both hooves up,” says Bennett, who has trained 50 horses since taming his first pony at age 6. Despite his young age, Bennett has earned a reputation in eastern Texas for being able to tame the most spirited and troublesome horses.

“He’s like a 16-year-old horse whisperer,” says the stallion’s owner, Randolph Sherling, 70, of Chandler, Texas (pop. 2,099). “He’s got gentle hands and infinite patience.”

Sherling marvels at his horse’s makeover under Bennett’s tutelage. “I sent him a thoroughbred stallion who never had anything done with him. That’s a pretty rank animal,” Sherling says. “A baby can ride him now. He’ll stand tied to a lead, he’ll back up, he’ll keep his head level and do quarter turns and hind turns. You couldn’t ask for a better job.”

Bennett, who is home-schooled, spends his mornings studying and his afternoons in the corral. “I don’t rush them,” he says, explaining his secret to winning an animal’s trust and changing its behavior. He spends up to three months training a horse and charges $400 a month.

Before he ever swings a saddle onto a horse, Bennett gets the animal used to humans and noises. He keeps a tire hanging in a tree and stands the horse nearby where the animal will bump against it and get used to the jostling and touching. He ties plastic trash bags on a horse to acclimate it to rustling movements. During training, Bennett rides a horse for miles down quiet country roads and alongside busy highways.

“Once a horse leaves here, he’s not scared of dogs or cows or anything,” he says.

Bennett has been riding horses before he could walk, seated in the saddle with his grandfather, Doyle Bennett, 63, of Crockett, Texas (pop. 7,141). Both his grandfather and his father, Darryl Bennett Sr., 38, have trained horses and passed along their knowledge. But the elder Bennetts say they’ve never seen anyone as devoted to working with horses as DJ.

“DJ is so driven,” his father says. “He’ll go to horse clinics and use his own money. I’ve watched him work hard 13-hour days. He’s got patience and common sense, which we country people call ‘horse sense.’”

The young trainer has been bucked, bruised and kicked, and broken an arm, a leg, a foot, fingers and toes while taming bucking broncs, but he has never backed off from what he considers his life’s calling.

“I’m making money and doing something I really like,” Bennett says. “The day I got a saddle on that stallion’s back and got his head under control and walked a few steps, it was just great.”

Story by Marti Attoun, contributing editor.

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