The Horse Whisperer

by Will Jordan

His eyes narrowed as he worked the horse.

The animal studied the man with the sunburned skin and cowboy hat who appeared to be voicing familiar commands.

Deciding the man was serious about his work, the horse stopped fighting. He slowed to a steady canter and followed Jack Lawrence’s arms around the ring as he was guided carefully in a circle.

Lawrence is a horse trainer. When you have a horse problem, you send your horse to him.

“I never met a horse I didn’t like,” he says. “Most problems with horses are human-related. It’s up to me to bring the maximum amount of light out of a horse.”

Lawrence spends at least 30 days with every horse.

“I’ll know if I can ‘make’ a horse after 30 days, and 99 percent of the time we’re successful.”

His sessions include feeding, grooming, and fitness training. He trains problem horses, sick horses, unsound horses, and also will start young horses for riding.

“I relate horses to children,” Lawrence says. “Without a strong foundation, you have a problem child.

“Those are my children right there,” he continues, gesturing to a quarter horse, thoroughbred, English saddle horse, and barrel horse all tethered to an electronic walker. “I have the hot heads, one with a physical disability, and even one with Attention Deficit Disorder. They each have their own problems and have to be dealt with on an individual basis.”

Lawrence had a close relationship with his parents but owes a lot of his upbringing to some local cowboys who helped raise him.

“Everything I know comes from my elders, but I have my own form of training,” he says. “I’ve learned to move a horse with my mind and heart. I can talk to a horse without ever using my voice.”

Lawrence learned to ride at age 5.

“My grandfather put me on the back of a big ole paint horse and told me to bring in the cows,” he says.

Lawrence would ride around the 400-acre dairy farm and bring in the cattle sitting on a burlap tote sack and using a simple bridle.

“He was really teaching me how to ride and how to set a horse,” he says.

What Lawrence didn’t realize at the time was that the horse was so well trained that it didn’t need his guidance, and it “would have brought in those cows anyway.”

“I thought it was the greatest thing in the world that my grandfather trusted me to do this,” he says. “It built up my confidence.”

Another person who was instrumental in young Lawrence’s upbringing was Dr. Harry Guffee, a local pediatrician.

“We had a working relationship,” Lawrence says with a smile. “I traded labor for doctor bills.”

Guffee taught Lawrence how to “cut” or raise a horse.

Over the years, Lawrence has “broken a bunch of ribs, my collar bone, and fractured my pelvis,” while working around horses.

The horse trainer’s business, and home, sits on 15 acres just outside Franklin, Tenn., (pop. 25,648).

“This is sacred ground,” Lawrence says. “When I got this place, I named it Red Ranch after my father, Red Lawrence.”

He doesn’t charge much for his services and often trades his time for gifts.

“I have to love what I do,” Lawrence says. “Most times I’m lucky to make $2 an hour.”

Lawrence also works a night shift as a water plant operator for the Franklin water department to balance his finances.

“From 6 a.m. to mid-afternoon, I’m 100 percent cowboy and I love it, and from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. I work with humans, which enables me to do what I love,” he says. “This is all I know. It’s in my blood. I don’t make much money, but my word is respected and that’s my wealth; my word and my friends.”

The horse trainer doesn’t let weather stop him, and works year-round.

“It never gets too hot or too cold,” Lawrence says. “I go with it. I’m a cowboy.”

Will Jordan is a Franklin, Tenn.-based freelance writer.

first appeared: 1/21/2001