Animal Behavior, or How I Learned to Be a Dean

My first horse was named Jingle. I had a hard time staying on Jingle, maybe because my "saddle" consisted of a surcingle and a rolled up burlap bag. I was 4 years old.

My character and spirit were shaped on the 76-square-mile Nine-Bar ranch in Alberta where I grew up. I learned many lessons there, lessons that have proven valuable throughout my life and especially in my role as dean.

Holding the reins at only a year and a half, future dean Ted Valli poses with his sister.

Like most farm kids, my sister and I were expected to work. At an early age--before we were even in school--we were left on our own to trail 100 head of steers the final several miles to the train station, me riding Jingle and my sister on another Shetland pony, Julie.

My dad was the ranch manager. During his tenure the rise of technology--tractors replacing horse-drawn plows, etc.--brought about a switch from raising draft horses to tending 2500 head of sheep. I got one memorable lesson from a Scottish shepherd when I was trying to direct a dog herding sheep to a dipping vat for the control of sheep ticks (keds).

"If you want to give orders to a dog," he advised dryly, "you've got to know more than the dog does."

Leading the team of draft horses on halter out to water at the corral trough was also instructive. The gate was narrow; the horses were not. As a result, the procedure was not without risks. The strategy was to urge one horse through the gate, while holding the other back. The horses knew the routine very well, but unfortunately they made no prior agreement about which would go first so invariably both went at once, with me swept along between them doing my best to avoid their cleated feet.

The trough was 3 feet high and held about 200 gallons of water, covered in a healthy growth of algae. The horses would drink deeply, up to their eyeballs in the water. Then they'd come up for air, discharging that last gulp of water and a great deal of algae and saliva onto the top of my 10-year-old head.

There's a lesson in gratitude in there somewhere.

By the time I was 12 I had a horse named Old Baldy. True to her name, Old Baldy was an elderly Thoroughbred mare. She was sufficiently gentle that I rode her bareback with only a halter or a hackamore, and she was my means of transportation across the ranch, which was bisected by a broad irrigation ditch. Old Baldy had a habit of going very slowly on the way out and returning home at a gallop. On one trip back, she was in such a hurry to return that she made a beeline for the barn--instead of heading for the only bridge that crossed the irrigation ditch. Luckily, she was able to stop abruptly at the edge of the ditch. I was not so lucky. I flew over her head and ended up in the bulrushes, bent but unbroken.

Another tactic of Old Baldy was to aim straight for the barn door once inside the corral, without bothering to pause for the rider to get off. The doorway was high enough to clear the horse's head, but not the rider's; thus, the rider was required to make a drastic, in-course maneuver that resulted in a sudden and loud impact with the ground.

From these experiences I learned not only about animal behavior, but a good deal about human behavior as well. There are remarkable similarities between leadership as it is practiced with horses and with people. It isn't hard to imagine that I've encountered those within my administration who insisted on both going at once when it would have made more sense to take turns, or that I've been thrown off a time or two. But I'd learned long ago how to get up and get back on.