There is constant pain, and medicine to help manage it. But Horn keeps pushing.

“All I want to do is keep going,” Horn said. “I know when I’m down, I’ve got to get up.”

Horn, who now walks increasingly better on his own, praises the work of his therapists. “They won’t take no for an answer. They tell me I’m amazingly strong, stronger than anybody they know.” He also credits the nurses and doctors who have helped him, and longtime stage partners Siegfried Fischbacher and Lynette Chappell.

He talks about the night of October 3, 2003, when Montecore, a 400-pound tiger, instinctually dragged him off stage. Rushed to University Medical Center, doctors began what they thought would be a futile effort to save his life.

“I died four times,” Horn recalled. “My heart stopped four times. A doctor would try to pull a sheet over my head and I would push it back. He said ‘He won’t make it,’ and I started to meditate. I knew everything would be okay. God said it wasn’t my time to go.”

There is no bitterness toward Montecore. “He basically saved me. I had a stroke; he knew something was wrong and he took me to my exit,” Horn says.

Horn hasn’t lost touch with animals, a vital part of his life since childhood. He visits his animals several times a week, with trips to the Secret Garden & Dolphin Habitat at The Mirage, a sprawling enclave at The Strip resort that is home to some of the illusionists’ famed white lions and white tigers.

“My cats, they are all waiting for me,” Horn says with a smile. “I feed them, pet them, baby them. They have always been a part of my life. They are true magic for me.”