PUNISHMENT. 9 



promptly follow disobedience. The moment he yields, give 

 him his proper reward by patting him on the neck and 

 slackening the reins, which will greatly facilitate the process 

 of breaking. To obtain its full effect, a pat on the neck 

 should be accompanied by the voice. A combination of 

 these two soothing means will produce the best possible 

 effect and, as a rule, will accomplish its object. 



PUNISHMENT. 



The education of a horse, as I have already said, depends 

 entirely on the manner in which the rider applies the 

 principles of reward and punishment ; the appropriate appli- 

 cation of the latter being even more essential to success 

 than that of the former. Above all things, the rider of a 

 difficult horse should never lose his temper. When a horse 

 deserves punishment, he should get it with an amount of 

 severity which might be regarded as the outcome of anger, 

 but which should be proportionate to the offence. In fact, 

 we should treat horses as we do children. We all know that 

 nothing is worse than to punish a child when we are in a 

 rage. A horse can in no case understand the feeling which 

 prompts a man to punish him, and he will remember only the 

 pain he has suffered and the occasion on which it was 

 inflicted. His intelligence enables him to connect his action 

 with the punishment it provoked ; but it does not allow him 

 to go further than that. On this account, if punishment is 

 not administered at the precise moment the fault is com- 

 mitted, it will lose all its good effect, and will be an element 

 of confusion in the memory of the animal. For instance, 

 if a horse which kicks receives punishment when his hind 

 legs are off the ground, he will remember that he got hurt 

 for kicking. If, on the contrary, the punishment is received 

 after his hind legs have come down, he will be unable to 

 connect in his mind the ideas of these two acts ; in fact, the 



