Michael Byatt

Michael Byatt The

Evolution Of An Arabian Horseman

by Mary Kirkman

Internationally-renowned halter showman Michael Byatt is a throwback—a throwback to the days when the top Arabian trainers showed in both halter and performance. Many of his fans today might be surprised to learn that his earliest national titles came with performance horses; it took a few twists of fate to focus him on the in-hand division. Now more than three decades into his career, his standards retain their original scope. He continues to appreciate horses from a horseman’s point of view, balancing form to function, understanding the relationship between beauty and physical ability.

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How does a trainer reach that point in his career where his record is so successful that just being on the end of a lead affirms his horse as a serious contender? Where his phone rings with offers to show Arabians at distant points on the globe, to visit countries that many people only read about?

Byatt’s experience would indicate that the old-fashioned way works best: He worked hard, and he hasn’t forgotten what it took to get where he is today. “I competed in six Nationals before I ever made a cut,” he smiles. “It didn’t matter. When I made cuts and got top 20s, I kept the ribbons for 30 years because it was that important and it was wonderful.”

of politics and public service, and a definite emphasis on awareness of other cultures. The influences of his early life were strong and colorful, the first being his grandfather, the longtime mayor of a tiny North Carolina town called Marshville. Although his constituency may not have been large, Allen Griffin was highly respected; he represented the state on trade missions abroad—as early as the 1970s, he was traveling to Iran—and also was a well-known voice in its politics. “I still consider North Carolina kind of my home,” Byatt reflects. “It was the greatest spot in the world because my grandparents were there.”

Along the way, he had some lucky breaks. More than that, though, he had a world of talent, and by the time he cracked the big time, a lot of experience. Grounding it all was a family background that encouraged reaching for the stars and equipped him to handle the world scene.

His parents—his father, William (“Bill”), was a physicist and his mother, Evelyn, an art professor—were also definite personalities. When Michael was 6 weeks old, Bill took a job working in Los Alamos, N.M., and moved the family west. Both he and Evelyn were active in Democratic politics, and the house hosted an array of visitors, from former governor John F. Simms to the Kennedys. In 1968, Bill Byatt was a campaign manager in the state of New Mexico for Robert Kennedy during the ill-fated presidential campaign that ended with Kennedy’s assassination in Los Angeles.

A Horse Trainer?

Michael Byatt was born in Charlotte, N.C., into a family that had little to do with horses. In fact, the priority for him and his two brothers was education, with a hefty dose

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MICHAEL BYATT

From the beginning, the Byatt children were raised with an awareness of the world at large. A great-great uncle had served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany, and when Michael was 10, his father took a sabbatical in South America that moved the family to Ecuador. “I had parents that were very open-minded,” he recalls, “and through their personal experiences, they wanted to make sure that my brothers and I were as expansive in our thinking and our movement as possible. They were very, very educated, as their parents had been, and it was important to them that languages were spoken, that other cultures were considered.

The world I was exposed to was very tolerant and diverse.”

That framework fell apart when Byatt was 11, and his parents divorced. By then, the affinity for animals that had been apparent since he was a toddler had blossomed into a dedication that centered his life on horses. There were horses next door to the family’s Albuquerque home, and some of his earliest memories are of feeding them pears from the trees in his backyard.

His godparents also had horses, and visits to their home near the Rio Grande gave him basic experience in riding.

“They had two sons and two daughters, and my two brothers and I were very close friends with them. We would ride those horses up and down the river every weekend and in the summers—all the time we could.

That’s the way the horse thing started, just with horses.”

Arabians entered the picture in the late 1960s, when the U.S. Nationals came to town. He went to the show, and through a neighbor, breeder Ethel Ortenburger, got involved on a personal basis. “In the late 1960s and early 1970s, she was buying horses from Sheila Varian,” Byatt remembers. “We also had Jen Mar Arabians—Jennifer Byrd—who in 1972 had the United States National Champion Gelding Silfaun, who happened to be Ray LaCroix’s very first national champion. Those were the

Michael Byatt and Silfaun.

horses I was exposed to early on in the Arabian business.

The Dearth brothers were growing up there, and Bud and Lu Adams were in Los Lunas. We had a lot of good opportunities to see beautiful horses, and I was completely, completely, immersed in it and loved it.”

Another resident of Albuquerque at the time was Gil Chavez, who would go on to be a well-regarded Arabian and later Andalusian trainer from the 1970s on. Byatt cleaned stalls for Chavez’s father in exchange for board for his horse. A flexible educational situation lent time to improve his skills; when he transferred from a private academy to public high school, his previous credits lightened his class load during his junior and senior years.

He spent the time with the horses.

Michael Byatt’s decision to pursue a life in Arabian horses did not go over well with his father, but he was undeterred. The day he graduated, in January of his senior year, he got on a plane for California. He had a job with Don DeLongpré, and his career was launched.

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The Road To The Top

degree. “That is the one area I would re-do in all of this,” he says, looking back. “I would graduate college before going out into the world.” But at the time, his career was already on an upward trajectory, so before finishing four years of study, he was back in the show ring.

A look at Michael Byatt’s early career in Arabians is a walk down a memory lane of well-known names in the Arabian breed at the time: Don DeLongpré, who was at the helm of the remarkable Barbary’s career; Sitting After five years as a journeyman trainer, Michael Byatt Rock Farm’s Dick Landmasser; Chavers Arabians; Dale saw everything change, almost overnight, in 1981. It came Bergh at Dalur (in 1978, Michael showed the future courtesy of a black *Aladdinn daughter called Ddinnerka, Scottsdale and U.S. National Champion Mare Rohara the second name on his roster of “career-changing” Tsultress to her first championship as a yearling for names. She belonged to Dellene Warner and Gilbert Bergh and Rohara). Then there was Denise Borg, who Van Camp, who booked him to show her as a yearling at stood Ariston, in Santa Ynez; and Bevans Arabians, Scottsdale. It was a which featured daunting task: There such standouts as were more than 100 Basquelita and fillies entered in the Country Heir, full division. The show siblings by *Bask. was held at Paradise There, his most Park, and although cherished memory he had exhibited was a name from his at Scottsdale as far past—the gelding back as the event’s he had admired a McCormick Park few years before in days, he had never Albuquerque, U.S. won anything.

National Champion Ddinnerka was Gelding Silfaun. The a different story. gelding was the first She glowed blueof a quartet of what Michael Byatt and Ddinnerka. black in the desert Byatt calls “careersun and won the changing horses.” yearling division handily, then closed out the week with “I ended up riding Silfaun to the open U.S. National the Scottsdale Junior Filly Championship. To make Championship in Western Pleasure in 1980,” he says. “I it all sweeter, his other horses all went top ten. In the think I was the youngest person (I was 22) ever to win space of a week, Michael Byatt went from being one the open western at the U.S. Nationals.” more promising name on the horizon to a center stage performer in the Arabian horse business.

All in all, there were a lot of stops and a lot of experience, including a brief stint of running his own barn. “I “From that moment on, my life became a plane ride,” traveled all around the U.S., showing horses out of the he says. He was invited to do halter clinics, and in the back of my trailer and sleeping in the stalls or the trucks, fall, he was booked by Cecelia and Hans Bourghardt of having the greatest time,” he reflects. “Riding with good Aspenäs Arabstuteri HB in Sweden to show their horses people, staying up all night watching Gene LaCroix ride at the Salon du Cheval. anything and everything, watching Bruce Howard. At this time, I was strictly performance-oriented. That’s all Despite Byatt’s sudden prominence, the halter emphasis I really did—but we all did everything back then. We did didn’t claim him immediately; for the next few years, halter, English, western, equitation, everything.” he continued riding and driving horses, and saw his first top tens (“no championships, but top tens”) in In addition to the equine experience, Byatt also took time English. By the time he moved to Texas to work for to return to Albuquerque and log credits toward a college

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MICHAEL BYATT

Michael Byatt and JA Rave Review.

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Tom and Lanella Gray’s Act III, he had credentials on both sides of the show ranks. But since the Grays’ son, Sky, was the performance trainer, Michael for the first time focused almost solely on halter. Augmenting his growing reputation was a steady demand from European owners that he get on a plane and exhibit their horses.

Middle Eastern owners would come aboard for the first time in 1985, and Australia also became a destination in those years.

The change grew more pronounced when he went to the Kale family’s Karho Arabians in 1984. Although he continued to ride on a limited basis, Karho’s priority for him was halter. “So I continued to evolve as a halter trainer,” he says. “It wasn’t through any particular choice; that’s just the way it worked.”

Two significant changes occurred for Michael Byatt as the decade went on: In October, 1987, he went out on his own, opening a training center at Sandspur, in Scottsdale, and in November, 1988, he married Ann McGregor. The couple made the decision to look for a home base away from the Arabian vortex of Scottsdale,

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and chose the Atlanta area, where Michael opened an operation first as a part of Talaria Farms, and then in his own facility under the name Arabco. In addition to his by-then regular contingent of halter horses, there was a versatile young English contender named JA Rave Review—the third on his list of life-altering horses. Over the following five years, Michael rode and drove Rave Review to national championships in pleasure driving, English pleasure and informal combination. By that time, his ability as a performance trainer came as something of a surprise to the spectators at Arabian shows: He had made such a name in halter that his earlier expertise had been almost forgotten.

“Rave Review was incredibly important,” he observes, “in the respect that I could win national champion stallion, English and driving, already having won western. Rave Review kind of completed the picture.”

The rest, as they say, is history—too many champions, too many names to list. Michael refuses to cite favorites.

What is more important and perhaps less well known has been his role in breeding and marketing some of the

MICHAEL BYATT

world’s most respected champions/horses. Almost as soon as he was on his own, Michael Byatt was able to express a longtime passion for breeding Arabians—not just showing and marketing fine individuals, but breeding them as well. The years of working around the country and internationally paid off with an enviable knowledge of Arabian bloodlines and their representatives.

A good example might be the history of the powerhouse stallion Marwan Al Shaqab, owned by Al Shaqab Stud in Doha, Qatar, and the fourth of the milestone horses.

Byatt’s involvement is integral to the story. It began in 1993, when he, together with Kathy Teitrich, assembled the group that purchased the stallion Anaza El Farid.

Then, a year later, he put together the purchase of the prestigious Gucci herd, from which he sold U.S. National Champion Mare Kajora, who was in foal to Anaza El Farid, to Al Shaqab Stud. The mating resulted in Gazal Al Shaqab, U.S. National Reserve Champion Stallion, World and Middle East Champion Stallion, and an internationally-renowned sire who would spend two years heading the stallion ranks in Poland. (Of that sojourn, Janów Podlaski Stud Director Marek

Trela said in a 2009 interview, “I would certainly lie if I didn’t say that the one of the greatest merit was Gazal Al Shaqab. We scored a bull’s eye with him.”) From Gazal Al Shaqab came Marwan Al Shaqab, twice the unanimous U.S. National Champion Junior Stallion, World Champion Colt (twice) and Stallion, Nations Cup Champion Colt and Stallion, European Champion Colt, and Qatari Champion Colt and Stallion. For the past three years, Marwan has ranked at or near the head of sire lists for Scottsdale and the U.S. Nationals.

And there are other examples of guidance for clients, both in breeding and marketing, that have equaled the international success of the training and showing end of Michael Byatt Arabians.

It was his emergence as a breeder that led Byatt finally to change the name of his business from “Arabco” to “Michael Byatt Arabians” in 1997, the year he moved the operation to Texas, eventually settling in New Ulm, outside Houston. “I didn’t want to be known as just a trainer,” he explains. “I wanted my name as a breeder attached to the horses. I wanted there to be more meat on the bone than just to be a training stable.”

A Gallery Of Early Champions

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and morality of how we treated animals, and the choices that they didn’t have.

Today’s Priorities So, where does it all lead? How does the experience of a decades-long career translate to today? Byatt shows no signs of slowing down; he’s on the road more than half the year—but with careful recognition of a family that includes three children. There is an attention to detail that ensures attendance at the kids’ activities and taking them on trips with him, introducing them to the world with the same open-minded counsel that he received from his own parents. Implicit in the lifestyle is a respect for work.

“Then having kids, being honorable to them and being a role model and doing things with integrity was really important to me. It was important that there never was a chance that they could call me a hypocrite, or that they ever saw duplicity in my actions.”

Michael Byatt is candid that one change which has come over the years is his handling of the horses. As much as he loves them, he admits to having been guilty, particularly in the 1980s, of treating them in ways that he does not countenance today.

He credits his wife with opening his eyes.

“Marriage was a whole different level of responsibility,” he says. “I had to take care of somebody; I couldn’t make choices that were selfish. Ann is an incredible horsewoman, herself, and one of the most empathetic human beings toward animals—if I ever crossed the line (in handling horses) with her, it was so shocking to her. She cannot understand jerking and slapping horses, and anything more is totally unacceptable to her. She always made me question. We had real conversations about the ethics

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“(Training) is the application of repetition and release from pressure and stimulus, whether you are riding a horse or standing it up in halter. I think

He is remarkably frank when he looks back at how the horses had come to be handled, especially in the 1980s as the Arabian business rode a financial rollercoaster. For him and for many trainers, he says, the pressure of showing and marketing took control.

“Frankly, shortcuts were necessary at one point, when we had so many horses in training.

They’d come in late and we had to do things in an ‘expeditious manner.’”

Even now, he remains slightly mystified as to how he went off track in the first place. “In the beginning of my life, we didn’t do any of that (mishandling).

And then it became common practice to ginger and to hit, to overdo it. I remember the first time I gingered a horse—it was a big deal. And then it became so easy to do it, and it became too much.

riding makes you understand a horse’s way of thinking better, so you become fairer in the way you treat it because you know better how to approach that horse mentally.”

“Then I had a partner and a support group in Ann. If I ever felt like, ‘Oh, I can’t compete,’ she’d say, ‘Who cares? Wouldn’t we rather not compete? If your kid finds out you’ve cheated and abused to win, in the long term, how good is that going to be for the kids?’ Those are

MICHAEL BYATT

the questions I faced and dealt with and came out on the better end of it.”

It all came together in the mid-1990s. He made a conscious decision to change—but not without the realization that everything he had worked to build, his international reputation and level of success, could be severely diminished. “To me, (our industry) had gone from marijuana to heroin,” he explains. “I wanted to revert to spiked tea.”

He went forward with his changes anyhow, and to his surprise, the ribbons and trophies kept coming. “It was an epiphany,” he says. “I made a real clean break from my past, and I absolutely can look myself in the mirror

and say that I have never, ever, once deviated from that promise that I made to myself and to the horses in my care since 1997.”

The benefits were immediate and hands-on. “From a gingering standpoint, on any horse raised on my farm, I can pick its tail up and stand under it, with its tail draped over my head like a wig, and a horse would never ever consider kicking me because it’s worried about getting gingered,” he smiles. “It has no feeling of being threatened; it is completely comfortable with my playing with its tail.

In mares, we don’t have the infections, the clean-up, all of that nasty mess that came with gingering horses vaginally or rectally. That’s important—but the most important thing to me is that I have that horse’s trust.”

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The Wisdom Of Training After nearly a lifetime of involvement with Arabian horses and a lot of evaluating his own methods, Michael Byatt has definite ideas about how best to train horses. At this point in his career, he offers that he is lucky to have an important edge: the luxury of time. Most of the horses he shows are born on his farm, and he not only knows them, but he and his staff educate them—not for the standup pose, but simply in life skills—from the beginning.

“We start right from a week old,” he says. “We temp every foal twice a day, so they are handled a lot. After about a week, all of our babies get turned out 24/7 regardless of who they are, unless there is a reason (like a physical condition) that they have to stay in. They are caught and handled twice a day every day, just to be haltered, led around, temped, brushed, have their feet handled. So they

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are educated in a lot of ways, and a thoroughly educated horse makes a much easier horse to deal with, whatever you want to do with it.”

That framework of knowledge serves the youngsters well when they finally do enter show training, he says. “We’re not having huge struggles with horses having to learn how to lead, tie, go on the walker—all of that is being slowly transitioned into their lives in a process. I think that the more a horse understands what is being asked of it, the better it’s going to be.

“I tend to be a little tedious and repetitive in the preparation, but I think those things are absolutely important components to a fully-educated horse, and it becomes so much easier and lighter and simpler to get an important looking standup if the horse is fully educated in some really elementary things—like walking in a straight

MICHAEL BYATT

line, backing in a straight line, moving away from the pressure of the chain, moving off the pressure of a chain, doing all of the ground techniques you can possible do to maneuver a horse into its proper state before you ask for that more intense look. All of those fundamental core elements of an education, be it a horse or a person, are going to make the end product that much better.”

It is fair to point out that not every horse is going to be an angel; some arrive on the planet with challenging temperaments. Does his system “fix” all of them? “We don’t have wild horses,” he replies. “We have some fractious ones by nature, but they’ve still been handled.

It’s a long process of teaching from the very beginning that there are boundaries and barriers.”

He likens the process to human education. “You’re not going to get to the Ph.D. unless you’ve gone to elementary school and through all the steps required to get that last degree. The look that we want to get at the Nationals has to begin in elementary school, and that’s the fundamental thing I want to do with every single horse.”

Specifically, how would he handle one that has its own ideas about equine supremacy? “Before I’d try to teach it anything, I’d first make sure it was receptive to being taught,” he says. “That oftentimes is just by working a horse hard so that it’s not thinking about things other than ‘this is a person in front of me, so let me pay a little attention.’ So, if a horse came out and was really fractious, I might just lunge or free lunge or ride or do something with it before I’d ask it to learn something, because it’s too fresh-minded. I’d try to be fair with it; I’d put myself in that horse’s head a little bit. What’s he thinking? ‘I’m so jazzed up right now, I’ve had 12 Red Bull®s, I can’t think about yoga meditation right now’? So, I’m going to get all that Red Bull® out of his system and then I’m going to ask him to get on with the yoga.”

Rushing is not part of the program, and he observes that often the horses aren’t fully prepared when they hit the Scottsdale show ring. “I don’t really care if they have a big standup there or not, because I know that down the road, they’ll be fine.” That they routinely do well at the high profile show, he says, is a testament to the basic education they have received, whether or not they’ve yet “graduated.”

“I didn’t want to be known as just a trainer. I wanted my name as a breeder attached to the horses. I wanted there to be more meat on the bone than just to be a training stable.”

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A Blend Of Halter And Performance Perspectives Michael Byatt still rides. After all these years of halter showmanship, he is still comfortable on a horse with or without a saddle. In an age of specialization, that makes him an increasingly rare bird, since with horses more targeted to specific duties, most trainers have become more focused as well.

Asked what is lost when a halter trainer doesn’t have riding in his background, Byatt won’t go there. “Let’s talk about what we gain from the experience and knowledge of riding a horse,” he counters. “We learn how mechanically they work and why certain conformational points become more desirable. As a halter trainer, you might seek those things out. As they benefit the performance horse, they also benefit the halter horse, because things become easier for them to do.”

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Specifically? “If a horse is conformationally really super solid to be an English horse, for example, or a western horse, it’ll have a better laid-back shoulder. Then you don’t have to work so hard to make a horse trot well or look pretty through the neck as it’s standing up in its pose. That goes to the structure of a horse’s poll; if a horse is built to break at the poll correctly, it is going to be easier to bridle and its job is going to be easier. If you have that understanding, you will also understand how much easier it is for a horse to do that in a halter pose.

You’ll know how a horse’s mind and body work together.

I think if you ride horses, if you’ve tacked them up and cared for them and you’ve tended them that way, you are probably disciplined in a different way and cognizant of certain things that you might not be if you have never done that.

MICHAEL BYATT

“(Training) is the application of repetition and release from pressure and stimulus, whether you are riding a horse or standing it up in halter,” he continues. “I think riding makes you understand a horse’s way of thinking better, so you become fairer in the way you treat it because you know better how to approach that horse mentally. It takes an element of the physicality out of it. The training doesn’t have to be heavy-handed if you truly understand how a horse thinks mentally through the process, and understand how it works physically through the process.

That’s what I think you gain by riding horses: You just know them better.”

Is the industry better or worse now, with specialization the order of the day? “I don’t know,” he demurs. “I can’t get my hands around that. But for me, my own personal life experience has been so enriched by riding horses because it was the birthplace of my love affair with them—the relationship I had with those horses, in that I was their caretaker and companion and they were my caretaker and companion. It was so important in my own upbringing to have ridden, to know how to do that and to have had that relationship.”

also its growth in other countries. In recent years, just as halter and performance horses have been classified with labels here, there seems to be a trend of sorting foreign tastes into categories as well (or perhaps the trend is more noticeable as more horses come equipped with passports).

Where is it all leading? How could the passion for Arabians, in its many tastes, be best integrated?

“I’ve been dealing with this issue for a long time,” he nods, and sketches the basic differences. “We in the U.S. are so focused on and so conscious of riding our horses and their being sound, using horses (of course, horses have won in America that don’t qualify on that criteria). Yet, in general, a lot of our judges are performance trainers, we have a history of riding horses in this country, and we’ve brought in so many judges and people from outside breeds that have had an influence on the Arabian. So, there is a certain look that is prevalent here, whereas I think the European horse breeders have lent themselves to a more artistic, soulful, dreamlike horse—at times to the detriment of its athleticism. I think it’s gotten a little better lately, and if we continue to try to meld those two types into the perfect shade of grey, then we’re all going to benefit, because we’re going to have a really beautiful, useable, rideable horse.

It’s A Small World For Arabian Horses With nearly three decades of showing internationally as well as in the United States, Michael Byatt has watched not only the cycles of the Arabian horse business here, but

“Somebody asked me recently what is it going to take to really fix this breed,” he continues. “I’ve addressed publicly the need to be honest and truthful, and other issues. But I think if we fill the arena with 30 absolutely

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dreamlike, soulful, artistic, athletic-moving and useable horses that really entertain people—and not two or three great horses with a bunch of okay horses—I think that would go so far to making our business better again. Thirty horses that you lose yourself in are going to be really good entertainment, and we have to appeal to that entertainment level that people want when they are spending discretionary money.”

For the present, Michael Byatt will continue to enjoy what by anyone’s estimation is an incredibly successful career and lifestyle. At one time, he made noises about slowing down, but that doesn’t seem to be on the immediate agenda. Even the travel, while sometimes tiring, is rewarding.

“I love the privilege of it,” he says. “I sometimes can’t imagine how lucky I’ve been to be able to meet the people I’ve met, to be in the places I’ve been, to see the world as I’ve seen it.” In the end, it is all about the horses—the ones who started it all. ■

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MICHAEL BYATT

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