A profile piece on

Rosebud River Ranch

owner

Dr. Pepper Schwartz

...an article from the New York newspaper "North County News"

...written by Lezlie Wolff

“A stallion? You bought a stallion as a sophomore in college?! I exclaimed as Dr. Pepper Schwartz told me of the purchase of her first horse. “Oh, it gets worse,” she said with a rye grin as she pulled into the parking lot of the health clinic we were going to. 

But this revelation came mid interview and I should go back to the beginning. When I first contacted Schwartz last fall for an interview with her, she responded to my email from inside the United Arab Emirates where she had been lecturing. I knew that getting to know this intriguing woman of the world was going to be interesting. The day I did her interview was nothing short of an adventure.

Schwartz is a comprehensive horsewoman and breeder of Rocky Mountain Horses at her Rosebud River Ranch in Snoqualmie, Washington. Born in 1945, on the cutting edge of the baby boom, she has her BA and MA from Washington University in St. Louis and her MA and PhD in sociology from Yale.

Schwartz has published 14 books from relationships to families and even including an international thriller. She lectures around the world on topics from everyday stress to renewed intimacy. A professor at the University of Washington in Seattle, she is also the relationship expert for Perfectmatch.com.

I’m impressed in Pepper Schwartz, not because of her many prestigious awards like the Matrix Award for Achievement in Education but for her several ribbons won from the Lake Washington Saddle Club horse shows. Many would find her impressive because of her frequent TV appearances. In the last two months alone, I have seen her on Regis and Kelly and the Today Show. But no, I’m impressed because she can mount her horses from both the near and far sides (left and right). If I mounted from the far side I’d probably fall off the mounting block.

The morning of our interview I arrived at her enchanting ranch house at 10am with double ristretto, tall, skinny, lattes. As you enter into the cathedral ceilinged great room, you first become aware of the openness, light and warmth of the room.  Your eye is drawn forward to the east facing windowed wall with its in-your-face view of the magnificent Mount Si seemingly growing from the back yard.

Here lives the modern version of Indiana Jones. Her sitting room is furnished with comfortable chairs, couches and tables, each piece holding a secret of its history. Artifacts, from Schwartz’s storied life such as a picture of her astride a large white Lusitano horse in front of Chateau Chambord  in the Loire Valley or one taken with Ronald Reagan are found everywhere. The walls are lined with shelves full of the books she has absorbed and sign posts from her journeys to foreign lands.

We began talking about equine mentalities and the insight of Jane Smiley’s remarkable novel Horse Heaven (Alfred Knopf, NY 2000). Schwartz, whose life’s work is to understand what makes an individual tick, is an admirer of Smiley’s lucid ability to translate the horse’s view of the world. She said that the novel reshaped her idea of how horses see and think. “It got me thinking completely differently, trying to see what they are seeing. She really made me look at my horses differently like who are you?”

Schwartz has noticed a revolution in horse training taking place in the last several years, especially she said, male horse trainers. Collaborative and compassionate training techniques such as “At Liberty” training and trainers like John Lyons are making inroads into the good-‘ol-boy techniques of complete domination of the animal. They realize that fighting the horse and winning is not always the right thing to do, Schwartz said.

Schwartz remembers growing up; the philosophy was to never let the horses have their own way. Now, she says, she sees trainers approaching a horse having a bad day, differently. The trainer gets the horse to do something correct and then ends the training session on that. You end on a good moment because if you keep going it’s not going to get any better and you want to avoid a fight where everyone loses. The old school philosophy was that you take that horse on and win.

I asked her if, as a sociologist, she saw the same shift in human-to-human relationships where the individual’s point of view is considered and respected? She said she thought so theoretically but not necessarily honored in behavior. Outside of North America and some parts of Western Europe, she said, most women’s lives are pure misery. They have no freedom, and no choices. It’s a life of total domination and control.

Pepper on her Beau by the Sacred Circle Garden at Rosebud River Ranch

I was curious as to why she thinks horses do for us all that they do? Why will they go into war for us? Why would they go into a horse trailer, a confined box with no escape? She attributes this connection in large part to biology.

She believes we fit into their species organization.  If we are the alpha animal, in a way the they can trust and depend on, then they will do what we ask of them. It can be a strength if they have a worthy leader. But it can be a terrible weakness if they have a false leader that leads them into harm.

Since the organization of their society is to have a leader and to follow or to be that leader when they test you they are asking, “Are you the one? Are you the messiah?” If you don’t establish that authority with them, they don’t go in the horse trailer.

And often, she added, we like to do with them what they want to do. If they like to run, we like to run with them. They like to jump; we like to jump with them. When it’s all lined up, it’s a good partnership.

It becomes dangerous when they treat us like another horse. Schwartz says she sees so many people who make the mistake of thinking that being a common member of the herd is cool and then they get hurt. A horse may be getting irritated by another horse and will kick the other horse. No harm no foul. But if that horse sees the human as just another horse and kicks the human, that can be a very dangerous situation. You may be their friend but you are not their equal. You are their superior collaborator, she added.

Schwartz has low tolerance for horse people who think they know it all. The kind of people who don’t read, don’t listen, and are not open to new information. They are doing something irresponsible and they are hostile if you call them on it. The responsible horse owner would respond Oh, why do you think so? And would welcome the opportunity to learn something.

She relates a story of a border who insisted in lying down in her horse’s stall with the horse. “We’d tell her that’s just not safe and to please stop.” The woman’s response was to say that her mare wouldn’t hurt her.  Indeed, the mare wouldn’t mean to harm her human but if she panicked for some reason, the human is not her first concern. She is confined in a 12 x 12 stall and her primary need is to get away from the perceived danger, not to avoid stepping on the human.

At this appropriate  moment, Schwartz’s daughter, Ryder, came into the room with her “header” friend, Liam (in team calf roping, the header ropes the horns of the calf from the back of his horse). Ryder, who is coming 21 in February, is also an impressively responsible equestrian. She is a member of the Cowgirl Spirit Drill Team who get their drill horses from the feedlot auctions unwanted horses go to be sold for slaughter.

Prompted by her mom, Ryder showed me a recent video for a local television production of Cowgirl Spirit’s horse rescue in action. The team had gone to the auction to buy a couple of horses they could re-train ensuring a few horses a healthier future. They had planned to leave with two but a third horse had caught their eye.

Regrettably, they were out bid for the horse by the meat man. This was unacceptable to the usually reserved Ryder who took it upon herself to further negotiate the purchase of the horse from the buyer. An agreement was made and for $20 over the bid price the horse got a second chance to become a useful member of society. 

At this point in the interview, Schwartz had to leave for a doctor’s appointment in Seattle about 40 miles away. “Why don’t you come,” she asked, “we’ll keep talking.” Enthralled with our conversation and too selfish to bow out, I accepted the offer.

We got in her red, Lexus sports car leaving the Ranch in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains and drove west on interstate 90 to Seattle. We crossed the Lake Washington floating bridge into the city, up Capital Hill and finally into the parking garage at Group Health all the while Schwartz entertaining me with the escapades of her intriguing life.

Along the way Schwartz talked about her admiration of Ryder’s courage in seeing this horse to a safe home. “I was proud of her. For Ryder, it was to go against her natural inclination which is to be shyer. Learning what she had to do personally to do the things she cares about. I’m even more proud of her for that because she had to learn how to do that. You have to care enough and be tough enough to do it. I admire that in her. I’ll give her the money but I can’t face it,” Schwartz said of horse rescue.

Schwartz supports the efforts of Cowgirl Spirit by donating money to their rescues and giving them the ranch for an interim holding capacity. She traded her eight horse stock trailer for their three-horse slant which better suited both parties. She said she wished to save all the horses but it is just not possible.

Schwartz’s horse habit began when, at age three, her father put her on a horse and “That was it!” She laughingly told me a story of going to horse camp in Colorado. Her mother was so afraid of horses she wouldn’t even touch them. But her father got a big kick out of his daughter riding.

While mounted and talking to her parents one day, a tarp flew off another horse’s saddle and hit hers in the face and her horse took off like a streak. While her mother was screaming, as she says her father loved to tell the story, a cowboy yelled, “Look at that little sonovabitch ride!” Falling off was not his concern, you just get back on.

Schwartz began life in a middle class family in St. Louis, Missouri. Although her parents never bought her a horse, they did provide her with riding lessons which were sufficient until she was able to buy her own as a sophomore at Washington University.

College students usually sell their horses or at least lease them out while they are away at school. Horses are as time consuming as school. These are not two masters who are easily simultaneously served. Yet, this extraordinary young woman had the chutzpah to do so and to graduate as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow as well.

People also do not just go out and buy themselves a stallion! Stallions can be very, very dangerous. Their job in the herd is that of protector. They will fight to run off or kill anything that threatens their family; mountain lion, a pack of wolves, a pack of humans, another horse. If it is a threat, the stallion will defend his family.

In domestic society stallions are required to be enclosed by six foot fencing. At horse shows, notices of warning are required posted on the stallions’ stalls so that no one unwittingly walks too close and gets savaged. Not all stallions behave this way but it is in the nature of many individuals to do so. They are treated with the utmost respect and usually, handled only by experienced stud handlers.

Buying the Appaloosa stallion wasn’t the worst of it she told me. Although the horse was devoted to Schwartz and a docile riding companion for her, he was not so for everyone. The horse hated men and when he saw one, she told me, he turned into a dragon. A male friend of hers saw her ride the horse and thought he looked harmless enough. He decided one day to ride the horse and was subsequently hurt. Schwartz said, “I gelded him, what a surprise.” She later sold the horse to a woman.

Bringing horses to school became a thing with Schwartz. Her next horse was a Quarter Horse/ Thoroughbred mare who she brought to Yale. That worked out well, as the chairman of her department was also a rider. They became riding companions.

“I must say, it’s one of the rare places I was where I was walking across the street and I saw a guy dressed in jodhpurs et cetera. He was a polo player so I began watching polo.” She found it an astonishing experience as she was not raised in a polo-playing environment.

Schwartz brought her mare with her when she took her first job at the University of Washington, in Seattle. Finally, the serving of two masters caught up with her when she entered her first year in academia. She realized juggling her demanding workload and maintaining a horse at the same time was unrealistic. She sold the mare.

As we were sitting in the waiting room of the medical center, Schwartz told me of the many horses she had which led to her becoming a breeder of the Rocky Mountain Horse. Her impetus to became a breeder was to offset the expense of ownership, she said chagrinned.

Schwartz had a Thoroughbred gelding from the race track named Copernicus, who ran away with her on the trails. That didn’t work. She had a beautiful grey Saddlebred mare but “she was nuts” and a Quarter Horse who kicked. When she got pregnant and wanted to take fewer physical risks, she got a kindly Paso Fino, named Espresso, with whom she had a deep, binding bond. “I kept him until he died,” she said fondly.

She discovered Rocky Mountain Horses on the cover of Horses Illustrated magazine and clicked. Coincidentally, she had a meeting in Cincinnati with the American Sociological Association. As Kentucky is just next door, she said, she rented a car, drove to Kentucky, home of Rocky Mountain Horse, and met a lot of Rocky Mountain Horse people. At the end of the day she met a six-month-old stud colt, Bodacious Beau by Classy Fella, whom she fell in love with.

Beau was a handful but she said, she didn’t know any better. After all, she’d only had one stud before and briefly at that. Beau was a magnificent horse who she kept a stud until he was three when she realized he didn’t have the temperament she wanted and so, snip, snip, she gelded him. That’s how it all got going, she said. Beau is now 15.

The Rocky Mountain Horse has a lateral, four beat gait. This is also called a “single foot” or rack.  You should hear each foot fall individually in a continuous, regular rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat cadence. The foot falls are right rear, right front, left rear, left front.

This smooth, ambling yet ground covering gait feels like sitting in a chair on a conveyor belt, you just glide along. Beside their single foot gait, they also walk, canter and gallop. Many of them gait as quickly as they canter.

The breed’s signature coloring is chocolate with a striking flaxen or brilliant white mane and tail. This combination can also come in chestnut. Their coats may have dappling or striations in them. Of the 50 or 60 horses she has bred, Schwartz said she has only gotten two bays. I was taken with Schwartz’s horses manes matching her own flaxen streaked hair.

The Rocky Mountain is a refined horse standing 14.2 to 16 hands often with a lot of tail and mane. A “cold blooded” horse, they are noted for their docile temperaments and big hearts. Schwartz wanted a horse where she could easily handle a stallion. She said when Ryder was 13 she could safely handle her stallion, Rocky Morgan (by Doc).

This sturdy breed of horse is a great trail riding horse, sound, sensible and sure-footed.  They are also used for Sunday going to church horses, endurance racing, plantation surveying and team penning. A friend of Schwarz’s took her horse to a team penning competition where everybody there laughed at her until she wiped the arena with them.

Schwartz knew Beau could be pretty “cowie.” She told me of being on the trails with him one time when they came upon a stag. She braced herself for Beau to bolt but he charged the stag instead, she told me with pride.

Yenta, Yenta, Yenta! Dr. Pepper Schwartz isn’t just hooking up horses; she’s also on the net hooking up humans. Six years ago, Schwartz was invited to a lunch to discuss the idea of participating in an internet dating service, KISS.com, as a columnist. Being a person who prefers to be more significantly involved in business projects, she wanted a more satisfactory role. When they proposed to her to be the “relationship expert” in the project, she saw an exciting opportunity to be in a new world and said “Great!”

In 2003 marketing wiz, Duane Dahl, reassembled the KISS.com team, including Schwartz, to form Perfectmatch.com. Schwartz created a first rate, unique intake test which Dahl built the entire site around calling it the ‘Duet Total Compatibility System.’ “It’s been real exciting!” Dahl said. “We’re up to three million members. Pepper’s been a big part of that.”

“We wanted to come up with a revolutionary matching system,” Dahl recounted. “We thought there was a tremendous opportunity to launch a community for the 30 plus crowd seeking relationships.” The Duet system does not simply tell people about other people’s personalities but it also gives people better insight about themselves. This way they know better who they are and what they want.

Schwartz based the intake test on the same premise as the Myers/Briggs personality test which she used as her model. She also incorporated her similarity and complimentary social science research because, she said, we are also interested in differences as well as likenesses.

Her intake questions don’t prompt you to try and be somebody that looks better on paper. “I’m not asking people if you are nice or not nice. I’m asking if you are calm or passionate? Whatever you choose is good. We are very affirming,” she said.

Perfect Match also refuses nobody. Schwartz told me a story about their PR person, a woman who stands 6’2, who doesn’t mind being with men who are smaller. But another popular site would not make an arrangement for her with anyone smaller than she because they believe that men need to be taller than the women.

Another major difference Perfectmatch has with other sites, Schwartz told me, is that the competing sites give you no feedback, they just match you up. “I wanted something that was completely permeable that no matter if you didn’t even find someone, you got something out of it. Also, if you don’t agree with some part of the assessment, you can change it and label yourself differently. Other sites don’t trust the participants at all. They don’t even trust them to send them the information they are basing their matches on.”

How did Perfectmatch.com get hooked up with the movie Must Love Dogs? I asked Schwartz. That was all Duane Dahl’s genius, she said. She describes Dahl as your classic entrepreneur. What would take three years of school to learn he just understands how to do.

Dahl said that Schwartz was a big part of everything they did with the movie too. He said, “It’s exciting to see Pepper jump in and get involved in the business. Pepper is an integral part of everything we do and one of the reasons we have had success.”

Pepper in her office with two of her dogs, Star and Zuki

At this point in our adventure, we were almost back at the ranch and I was near the end of my third 60 minute tape. Throughout the trip, I kept asking questions and she kept telling stories. I had recorded her in her car, in the parking garage and in the elevators. I did have the presence of mind to beg off when she invited me in to the x-ray room with her.

As we took the exit off the freeway, I asked Schwartz about hooking up with Dahl. She said he was at that original lunch meeting which was nothing more than an opportunity to discuss an idea. He saw the opportunity and it turned into a big deal right there and then, Schwartz marveled. “Life can just change on a dime. Lot’s of opportunities just happen right there! It’s been a really wonderful thing for me.”

A people and animal person, Schwartz told me “there are few people that I don’t want to hear their story and there are few animals I’m not captivated in.” She has the quintessential work ethic and ambition to get what she wants but also the humility to recognize the fortuitousness of it all.  “I’m one of the luckiest people on Earth to have two children who want to hang out with me. To live my fantasy, to have become what I wanted to become and do it by myself, not on anybody else’s effort but my own.”

Dr. Pepper Schwartz put me in the mind of quantum physics; small things which have universal impact. This larger than life woman may only stand four feet tall but her ambitious, courageous and compassionate nature is not to be denied. However, it was her sudden embarrassment as her attentive barn manager, Tom, was tacking up Beau, which captured her true character. She wanted me to know that ordinarily she does her own grooming.  

Comments are welcome at Lezliewolff@yahoo.com