Jeremy Morris fits the cowboy look all the way down to his beige leather chaps, silver spurs and brown wide-brimmed cowboy hat.
But when it comes to the way he trains his horses, he and most cowboys see things a bit differently.The horses he trains aren't thrown into stalls, roped and then broken until they'll tolerate a saddle and rider. Instead, they are exercised and rewarded heavily for doing what the trainer wants in a method people outside horse circles call horse whispering.
"It's just such a better deal for them then getting roped, choked and having a saddle thrown on them and yippee-ky-yea, away we go," Morris says.
The nonviolent training methods he uses were passed down from his grandfather. They've been around for decades, but with the newly-released Robert Redford movie "The Horse Whisperer," the popularity is likely to grow.
The movie, based on a best-selling novel by Nicholas Evans, is about a badly injured girl and horse that seek the help of Redford's character, who has a reputation for being able to heal horses.
Morris is quick to point out that he's not a horse whisperer - at least not in the mystical hocus-pocus sense that most people think of. He's just a cowboy, he says, who uses different methods to train horses.
"It's not horse whispering. It's just true unity with the horse. It's just knowing what is bothering the horse and trying to figure out what will make the horse happy," says Morris, 25.
The methods vary slightly from trainer to trainer, but so-called "horse whisperers" agree there is nothing magical about the training.
"Nobody is going up to a horse that's never been bridled and whispering in his ear, and you can suddenly jump on him and ride him bare-back," says Stacie Moriarty of the American Quarter Horse Association, based in Amarillo, Texas.
Morris is the first one to agree. What he does is put the horse he's training in a circular pen, allowing it to run. He'll get the horse used to being close to him and eventually put a saddle on it.
All the while, the horse is rewarded heavily with kind words and petting for doing the right thing.
The horse doesn't have a heavy metal bit in his mouth, and when trained right, doesn't need one at all.
On this spring afternoon, Morris' horse Josh is trotting around a pen at the guest ranch, Rancho de los Caballeros, where he works. As soon as Morris yells "whoa," Josh stops, turns and walks right up to him.
The horse nuzzles Morris, pushing his head close to the cowboy's stomach to get Morris to stroke his neck. The cowboy rides Josh without a bit or bridle, too.
"I was pretty nervous the first time I did this," says Morris as he climbs onto Josh.
Morris motions with legs to tell the horse to walk, trot, stop, back up or do about anything else he wants - all without a word or bridle.
"It's just like we're dancing. We're one," he says.
The popularity of these so-called horse whispering methods is spreading with experts holding clinics across the country for professional trainers and for so-called backyard breeders.
"This really is hitting the airwaves I guess because of the notoriety of the movie," Moriarty says.
While it can take more time to train a horse using what the industry prefers to call "resistance-free training" or "natural horsemanship," the result may be better communication with the horse and less trouble along the way, she said.
The methods have been largely overlooked by generations of horse trainers, but they seem to work, Moriarty says.
"It's not like psychic healing. It's not calling an 800-number and your horse will do everything," she says. "It's methods that are tried and true."