Speaker 1: This is peed Life Radio.
Speaker 2: Let's talk Pats.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Human Animal Connection Show, where we believe
we can communicate with all animals. Join us as we
explore the thirty three principles and healing methods of the
Human Animal Connection. As animal lovers, we know that you
share our commitment to making the world a kinder place
for all creatures. Together, let's embrace the transformative healing power
of the Human Animal Connection.
Speaker 2: Hello everyone, welcome to the Human Animal Connection Podcast. I'm
your host and the executive director of the Human Animal Connection,
Genie Joseph, and I've been so looking forward to this
show because I'm speaking with Donna Janelle Bowman, and she's
the author of Step Right Up, which is a book
written for younger, younger readers, but I read it to
my high school students in our program Canine Teach Compassion,
because so I think this is one of the most
important stories for any animal lover, for any horse lover.
And I have to tell you a lot of people
don't believe this story is true, but it is absolutely true,
and we're going to find out that whole story.
Speaker 3: So Donna, thank you for being with me, Thank you
for inviting me I'm honored to be here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so how did this story cross your path? And
what made you think I got to write this for
younger people.
Speaker 3: First, it's important to know how I grew up. I
grew up on a ranch with horses and surrounded by
all kinds of animals, practically lived in in a zoo,
but without the zoo animals, just farming ranch animals. But
I was completely in love with horses, and I showed horses,
trained horses, so they had that background. And then, of
course I'm a writer. So in two thousand and six,
I stumbled across the book written for adults by nim
I Claive about Beautiful Jim Key. So, just as a
horse lover, I had to have that book and I
read it and was so fascinated. I wanted to learn more.
But I was also extremely skeptical. I didn't really believe
all of this.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I know some of my hardest horse friends
are like, no, this is not true. They just don't
I get it.
Speaker 3: I totally get it. I had to find out for myself,
when that means I had to do original research. So
I launched into years of research to this story.
Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, well for our listeners who don't know the
story of a horse named Beautiful jim Key. Let's give
our listeners a little bit of the story.
Speaker 3: So broadly, this is a human and animal story. You
can't talk about Beautiful jim Key without first understanding William
dac Key, who was born an enslaved man who was
born around eighteen thirty three in Tennessee, and he was
a child who had this uncanny ability with animals, and
so as young as six years old, he had trained
a rooster and a yellow dog to perform tricks. He
had an innate gift with animals, and was sent to
farms around the county to work with their very armory
an animals, and then came to Civil War. All of
this leads up to the man who was going to
be absolutely instrumental in raising this horse known as Beautiful
jim Kie. Doc was a self taught veterinarian. He was
also fortunate to have been educated by his master's an
uncomfortable thing to talk about, but he had had great
honest towards the people who quote unquote owned him, and
they apparently to him, they were probably related. They and
because he got some freedom to travel around and work
with other animals. He got to see the plight of animals.
There was a tremendous amount of animal abuse. It was
a brutal time for animals, as it was for a
lot of humans, including African Americans. Enslaved people and even children.
So he got a pretty open perspective about that and
about how not to treat animals. He also taught himself
to create medicines, including a medicine that became wildly popular
known as Keystone liniment. After the Civil War, he became
a very successful businessman, and that was his most successful
business was this liniment. He used it in his animal practice.
He was a horse doctor and during his medicine wagon
shows he would travel around selling his liniment. He discovered
a rundown circus. It was selling a everything they owned,
including a gray mare that had been obviously abused, and
he bought this Arabian mayor for forty dollars, took her
home Nurster back to health. Loved this mayor, claimed that
she was the smartest horse he'd ever seen, and once
she was back to health, he'd Nurster back to health.
He matched her with the fastest racing stag and he
could find presumably in the country a Hambletonian trotting racer,
and the offspring was this sickly crooked legged colt. Doc
had no hope of this cult surviving, so he was
he was very close to shooting the animal because he
just didn't think you everyone to survive.
Speaker 2: Everyone was telling him you can't, You got to kill this.
Speaker 3: Thing exactly, but he just didn't give up. So, presumably
because of Doc's very good care, this colt did survive,
but at about a year old, Loretta died. Now a
yearling doesn't need his mother anymore from milk, but a
sickly crooked legged colt needs another animal to protect him.
And long story short, Doc brought the colt to live
into his live in his house, and he treated this
cult like a child, identifying objects the way we do
with kids, and that he stayed there until basically this
horse was so big he was busting through the door
frames and through the floorboards, and Doc said, you got
to get out of here. And it ends up that
Doc slept in the stable with the horse. So this
progressed into the horse trying to play a game of fetch,
copying what Doc was playing with the dog, and then
he progress even more with him answering question. One day,
his wife walked into the stable with an apple and
she said, hey, Jim, you want a piece of apple,
And Jim actually nodded his head up and down. Yet yes, yes,
Wiley Worth mentioning too. This is a fun fact. The
name Jim Doc Naked is cult Jim after the town
trunk who was wobbly stumbled fell down a lot, just
like this poor colt. We named him Jim, but he
gave him his own last name, Jim Key. So Doc
started wondering how smart this horse really was. What could
he really teach this horse using only kindness? That was
the most important thing.
Speaker 2: And we had just to underscore this was not what
was done at the time, tell us and like, yeah,
of course she would teach with kindness. But in those days,
horses were just tools, you know, in many cases, I
mean not every case, but in many cases they were
just property. They were just tools. When they weren't useful,
they were shot or whatever. You So the notion that
I've seen Jingle horse was kind was literally revolutionary. And
not everybody agree with him.
Speaker 3: I'm sure a lot of people thought he was absolutely crazy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what did he begin to teach him.
Speaker 3: So at first he thought he he wondered if he
could teach his horse to identify the letter A. So
he made cards out of what we today would think
of cardboards, the equivalent back in the eighteen hundreds, AAA,
and he would just repeat it over and over AAA,
and he covered the card with sugar, and Jim eventually
learned to like sugar and then just made the cards
all soggy, so Doc had to remake these cards out
of ten. He then, once he was satisfied that Jim
could identify the A the shape of an A, then
he wanted to teach Jim to bring the A to
him on command, bring me the letter A, so we
put Jim loved apples. At first, he didn't like sugar,
which is unusual. Most horses do like sugar. Do not
feed your horses right, but do that. Jim had to
learn to like sugar because apples weren't in season all
year long. So he did teach Jim to fetch the
piece of apple in a handkerchief. Bring me the handkerchief,
you get the apple. So this is the beginning of
positive reinforcement. You do this thing I'm asking for you
figure it out, you get a reward. So Jim figured
it out. If I bring him this the handkerchief with
the apple in it, I get the apple. So that
transferred to these cards. He took him six months. Doc
said to teach him the letter A, to identify it,
and to bring it on command. And then he progressed
through the entire alphabet, and then onto numbers and colors
and flags and other aspects of what we consider education.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's just extraordinary. I mean nobody was teaching the
horse of the alphabet at this time.
Speaker 3: This is not something horses to do out in the pasture.
Speaker 2: That's great, and so what happened next? He learned the alphabet.
What happened next?
Speaker 3: So the first thing you did is Doc took Jim
out with the medicine wagon, because remember he's selling his lineaments.
He's a horse doctor, and it's his popular business is
making him money. Doc had become a pretty wealthy man already,
so Jim was just making it even easier. Jim learned
how to play sick or laying on command, or maybe
he whispered or cue or something. Doc would cue him
already got act sick here in front of this audience
with my medicine wagon, and people laughed, they bought it,
and that's how Jim got his like stage. That was
his stage premier. Well, Doc then had an opportunity because
the Tennessee Centennial Exposition was coming to Nashville in eighteen
ninety seven and Doc wanted a stage for Jim. He
wanted to show everybody what seven years of education of
training could accomplish using only kindness. And the directors of
this festival, the ex Exposition basically laughed at him, said
there's no way this is hokey. But Doc was on
the committee for they called it the Negro Building, where
African Americans could show off their technology, their wares, their advancements,
and so he pushed it until he got a stage
for Jim. And it was on that stage where one
fateful day, President William McKinley was in the audience and
Jim was asked to identify the President, which she did.
He looked at President McKinley and he bowed, and then
Doc said, go bring me the McKinley card. So Jim
went back to his rack at the back of the
stage where all these names and numbers and cards and
everything was back there and he picked up the correct name.
There is a photograph of Jim holding that McKinley card,
and then he was suddenly on the world stage. Everybody
knew who Jim Key was, and reporters started calling Jim
Key beautiful Jim Key. So that was the beginning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's wonderful. So I know he went on
to do world World's Fairs, and I think they said
ten million people or something saw him some number like that. Yeah,
And what was exciting was he also learned how to spell.
Not only could he identify the letters of the alphabet,
but he could spell certain words. And I heard that
he was able to beat six graders in spelling bees.
That's right.
Speaker 3: Now, I do want to make a very important point. Yes,
nobody server claimed that this horse or any horse learned
the way we humans learn. Of course, right right, Like
we said earlier, horses aren't out in the pasture comparing
their crib notes or yes, yes, they're not spelling words
or tricking each other in math problems. But you can
absolutely train and condition an animal to identify things, and
they'll have an association that will certainly look like it's
exactly an education. So this is what was happening. We
will never be able to explain everything that Jim did.
Speaker 2: We just know he did it. We don't know the
mechanism of communication between horse and human that doc Key
and Jim Key shared, which I think is really, to me,
the most important part of the story. Of course, it's
exciting to hear a horse being taught all these different
things using only kindness, but it's so exciting the way
in which they were able to exchange information. And there
was another horse called Clever Hans in Europe, and at
the time it appeared that this horse could count and
add and subtract and do different things, and he was
a worldwide phenomenon, and people came and tested and it
seemed like it was true. And then finally a group
of scientists discovered that the horse was reading very subtle
cues by the person. And they called it a failure,
they called it they called it a hoax because they
felt like they had been pulled the wall, had been
pulled over their eyes, when in fact I thought it
was should have been amazing that a horse could read
these tiny little cues from a human who didn't even
know he was doing it. I mean, these were like
the subtlest shift of an eye or the head or
something that the horse could understand. The human didn't realize
he was doing this, but it set the whole field backwards.
You know, it's still a sort of a joke in science,
the Clever Hans effect. It's called the name after the
name of that horse. But Jim Key, I think was
very different. And one of the ways that I think
of it as being different is that I remember one
story that a reporter they always wanted to test him,
and they wanted to test him without Doc keep present.
And Docy said to this one reporter, Okay, you can
test him. I won't be the present, but afterwards, give
him an apple and let him know that he did good.
So the reporter came very skeptical, did the test. Jim
could answer all of his questions whatever he asked him,
but the reporter forgot to give him the apple afterwards,
and so reporter left being convinced. And Doc said to
Jim afterwards how to go, and Jim spelled out fruitless, fruitless,
fruitless because he didn't get his apple right.
Speaker 3: So, you know, I would have never entertained this idea
if not for experience that I had with horses growing up,
Oh tell us, I well, I showed a lot of horses,
trained a lot of horses that I had one specific
mare in the most formative years of my life. We
had an absolutely uncanny connection. It was incredible. I spent
so much time with this mayor Didi that was her nickname,
that we could sort of read each other's minds. I
mean not literally, but you know, we could read each
other's subtlest body movement. And for example, would be in
a horse show ring and I would like in showmanship
or horsemen or halter where you're standing on the ground
as an example, and I would think I should have
DEDI moved that back leg like three inches, that back
right leg.
Speaker 2: She would do it.
Speaker 3: I didn't have to ask her. She just did it
because she's looking at my eyes. She's looking at just
the subtlest little shift in my body that I'm not
even aware of.
Speaker 2: He did it.
Speaker 3: If not for those years with DD and observing these
minute asks that I wasn't even where I was asking,
I would not have had such an open mind about
beautiful Jim Key.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I really encouraged for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really encourage people to read the book Step Right
Up as a version for kids. And then there's also
another book, Beautiful Jim Key I think is the name
by uh, what's her name, Michael ReBs. Yeah, and she's
written the adult book with a lot of history in it.
But there are so many stories that show that we
don't know exactly the mechanism for how information is transferred
from one species to another. And it's not every horse
that does this, it's not every human that does this.
But when there is this unique relationship, there is a
flow of information in ways that we don't completely understand.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: It certainly involves all the senses. It certainly involves site,
it certainly involves sound, it certainly involves reading body language,
it certainly involves reading mood. But there's more know like
I don't. I'm not claiming to have the answer to
what the more is, but like you, I've had so
many experiences with animals where this is not possibly explained
by ordinary means that it really invites us to consider
the possibility that communication between species is more possible than
we know. More possible.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, And I think you're you're spought on about
clever Hans. I think it's it's a travesty that that
that their relationship, that the man and Clever Hans relationship
was discounted because they identified cues. Of course there were cues,
right because a horse is not going to think in
the same way a human does. And it's no less remarkable.
It is no less remarkable.
Speaker 2: It's just that they didn't realize what the remarkableness was, right,
you know.
Speaker 3: And in the case of Yeah, and in the case
of beautiful Jim Key, I think it's the important part
of the story. Isn't how he did these things. We
know he did it. There are hundreds of witness accounts
that he did all these things on stage. The important
thing is what they did for the humane movement. That
they convinced people to be kinder to animals and to
each other, and that itself is enough. We're all going
to be fascinated forever about how it was accomplished, but
the important thing is what they did for the world.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, we're going to take a short little break.
When we come back, I want to sort of look
at how you've been taking that forward into your world.
You work with kids, you work with this book, and
how other kids of our generation are now learning the
story of Beautiful Jim Keane will be back in just
of all that perfect.
Speaker 1: Hey, friends. If you like what you're hearing and want
to learn more, check out doctor Joseph's book, The Human
Animal Connection, Deepening Relationships with Animals and Ourselves, or visit
the website The Humananimalconnection dot org to book and all
online consultation. Thank you for loving animals. Now back to
the show.
Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to The Human Animal Connection. I'm your host,
Jeanie Joseph and the executive director of a nonprofit, The
Human Animal Connection, and today we're talking about a horse
named Beautiful Jim Key. And the book is called Step
Right Up. A book for young readers. What's the age
grape group that this is written for, Donna.
Speaker 3: Oh, I like to say to this is first second
grade through age ninety nine.
Speaker 2: Set in grade age.
Speaker 3: Non fiction picture books are for all ages, exactly.
Speaker 2: I think you know it's terrible that we think picture
books are just for kids when they's so much fun.
Speaker 3: I'm not.
Speaker 2: And the illustrations in this book are absolutely beautiful, and
we'll show a few for those of you who are
watching us. On video, So tell us a little bit.
I mean, one of the things that Doc Key did
is he had children signed a pledge. I think a
million children or something signed this pledge in late eighteen hundreds.
Was that, Well, I forgot the year. But what was
the year that the World's Fair and all these different
things than the kids were signing this pledge of kindness.
Speaker 3: Oh gosh, I'm gonna ask me about the Uh okay, sorry,
I'm notable.
Speaker 2: No, that's okay.
Speaker 3: So we had the nineteen oh four World's Fair and
then there was there was a big fair in nineteen.
Speaker 2: Oh six as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so those I don't remember which year the pledge started.
That the George Angel was, who was the founder of
the Massachusetts Society of Preventional Cruelty to Animals and the
American Humane Education Society gave Doc and Jim Gold medals
living examples of the power of kindness when it came
to animals. And so with that came bands of Mercy
all the ways, all across the United States. And then
within those would be smaller clubs for kids. So kids
would join and droves join these clubs where they took
a pledge they promised to be kind and they would
write essays about either a kindness they had witnessed or
cruelty that they had witnessed, something they had done to
correct or wrong. It was really beautiful to learn about.
Speaker 2: Wow beautiful. And I know when you go out and
work with kids with your book, you invite them to
sign a similar pledge. Tell us some of the experiences
you've had working with kids in this story and how
it's inspired them.
Speaker 3: I do. The original pledge is a little bit outdated,
as you can imagine, and it was important to me
that with Step right Up, we bring the pledge back
and update it. So if you don't mind, it's a
very quick pledge.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I promised to step right up and choose kindness.
I will respect the needs and feelings of others, including furry,
feathered and finned friends. I will share kind words, do
good deeds, and help those in need because kindness can
change the world. So I wanted to again make this
inclusive of not just animals, but each other as well,
because we certainly need more kindness today.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm wonderful, wonderful, So do kids readily sign this.
Tell us about your experiences taking pledge out.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you, kids get it right. If there are
any humans in the world who understand kindness from cruelty,
it's young people. I visit a lot of schools. Most
of the time they're asking for me to talk about
this particular book. I've written many books because of the
kindness theme in this book. I walk into schools where
entire hallways are just plastered with signed pledges, where these
schools have all their entire student bodies signed the pledge,
where the library is full of the kindness pledge. So
it's beautiful. When I finish my school visit presentations about
Doc and Jim, and we talk about not only the
amazing things that Doc taught Jim and how he might
have done that, and we talk about the difference they made,
about how one person and one animal made this enormous
difference in how we can each make a difference in
our own family, in our own neighborhood and our own city.
We can expand out, and we talk about that domino
effect or the ripple effect. I make a difference at ripples,
so the next person that just keeps on rippling out
and then we can change the world that way. I
was at a school visit an inner city school economically disadvantaged,
and had finished my third presentation of the day there
about step right up, and we had just taken the
kindness pledge, and a third grader in the very back
of the room, very meekly raised his hand and he said,
what I want to know is if so many people
promise to be kind when Doc and Gym were alive,
why is nobody kind today? You could have heard a
ken drop, Wow, silent in the entire room, Wow, this
walled wall of kids and teachers, librarians, And in an
INSTINT had to think about this because I know what
he's saying, and I could see it on his face.
Why is nobody kind today? And all I could say
then was a lot of years have passed since Doc
and generalize, and we've had two world wars and there's
been a lot of it's been covered up. Their story
has been covered up. So maybe it's time we remind
the world, yes, that we can make a big difference
with kindness. How many of you agree? And then every
hand goes up, and so those like downtrodden faces suddenly
see a little bit of the light. They get it.
And then I've had other visits where. I mean, almost
every single school visit, at least two to five kids
will come up to me after the visit. Sometimes I
have three hundred people, three hundred kids in the cafetorium
or even more, and they'll sneak out of their groups
and they'll come up to me and they'll whisper something
in my ear about some abuse that they have been
witnessed to or they have been the victim of, or
sometimes that they helped an animal or helped a little sister.
It is it makes my job worthwhile. Exactly why I
do what I do. I get fan mail that is
just sometimes heart wrenching and at other times bolstering.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that.
Speaker 3: This story has made a difference to them because now
they see that something that's been happening was wrong. They
didn't know animals could think and feel, right, Yeah, and
that's such an important message. That's why I read it
to my high school students is to remind them, yeah
about that you know that and how like as you said,
one horse, one man can't solve all the problems, but
can make a difference. And for them to think about
if they can help that one animal that they know
is experiencing some abuse if they can do anything, you know,
I don't you know, I'm not saying they should enter
in themselves, but you know, sometimes call the authorities or
whatever could it takes to get some action taken.
Speaker 2: It. It changes, It changes everything when one person's suffering
is alleviated when one person, when I say person, I
mean person animal. Were animals by one person animal animal person.
Speaker 3: And in children's books, animals are stand ins for human yes, yes,
even a real animal like Beautiful Jim Key. Children read
Beautiful Jim Key and the experience the relationship between Doc
and Jim. This is like two people, and this is
like eight year old Johnny with eight year old you know, Alicia, whatever, Right,
Animals are always stand ins for a human experience, So
it's an especially important story for the young people.
Speaker 2: Definitely, definitely, definitely. Well, it's just I'm so happy that
you wrote this book and put it out into the world.
How did you was the illustrator someone that you knew
or how did you two come together?
Speaker 3: No, most people don't realize that authors rarely ever meet
their illustrators in traditional publishing, rarely ever. I was delighted
when the publisher secured Daniel Minter to illustrate this book
that he agreed to sign on to this project. All
of his art for Step Right Up is with linoleum
block art, so they're all carvings. The entire book is
done in carvings.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: There's an illustrator of video on my website where he
talks about his process and he shows him He shows
the process of carving these images and some of his
design decisions, for example, putting William as a child outside
the circle of the family rug, which is a circle,
his decision to do that, his decision to not put
a halter or bridle on Jim the Whorehu because it
didn't want to show this horse in bondage.
Speaker 2: Yes, beautiful, remarkable, wonderful. It's so beautiful that a meeting
of the minds to bring something great to the world. Well,
how can people get in touch with you and find
out more about what you're doing?
Speaker 3: Oh, I would love that. I can be found on
my website Donna Janellebowman dot com and I have a
contact form there. Then we would like to reach out.
I'm always happy to hear from readers and anybody interested
in this book or any of my books.
Speaker 2: Absolutely well, I know you've written several books. Can you
just mention a couple that you'd like to share with
our audience before?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Sure.
Speaker 3: My newest book was a collaboration with Olympic gold medalist
Billy Mills called Wings of an Eagle The Gold Medal
Dreams of Billy Mills. Billy's the only American, actually the
only athlete from the Western Hemisphere to ever win the
Olympic gold medal in the ten thousand meter event, and
he's only the second Native American in history to win
a gold medal in any track and field event. I
tracked that story for a very long time before I
finally got a hold of Billy and he agreed to
be sort of hands on with me so we can
do his story great justice. I've also written about Abraham
Lincoln's little known duel and the first man to heart
rope over the Niagara Falls River in eighteen fifty nine,
and others to come. Wonderful, Yeah, wonderful, Thank you for asking. Yeah, well, great, well,
thank you so much for writing this wonderful book. Step
right up, and it is how duc and Jim Kee
talked the world about kindness, and that was such important
in the world This was the day and age where
horses were just dying in the streets in New York
City and getting no water, and it really helped accelerate
the kindness movement, the awareness that animals need to be
treated better and that humans need to be treated better too.
Speaker 2: So thank you for bringing this story to life.
Speaker 3: Thank you, and thank you for all you're doing to
raise awareness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you've been listening to The Human Animal Connection.
I'm Jeanie Joseph. We'll see you next time. Bye for now.
Speaker 1: Thank you for tuning into The Human Animal Connection show.
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