FOREWORD TO COLT-TRAINING 25 



horses. My greatest success is usually with an un- 

 broken three-year-old ; I can teach the wild, unhandled 

 colt anything I choose to. My most difficult tasks have 

 been to handle and train colts that have been badly 

 handled and developed vices and bad habits. These I 

 have succeeded in curing, but I have had to use an 

 enormous amount of patience to make them forget their 

 bad habits and learn good ones. 



I have several remarks to make before I give the 

 exact description of correct colt-breaking methods, 

 after which I will explain how I break and train an older 

 horse with a bad habit, such as a kicker, a runaway, a 

 shyer, a nappy horse, a vicious horse, a side-puller. Of 

 course these bad horses would never exist if they had 

 been properly broken and trained. 



I was invited to visit a farm near Ilford some time 

 ago to handle a three-year-old half-bred hackney filly. 

 This filly had never been handled, and was quite wild. 

 The spectators, including the farmer and his family, 

 four farm-hands, a member of the R.S.P.C.A. and others, 

 were all wondering how I was going to catch the colt 

 in fact, they thought it was an impossibility. After 

 the colt had been driven into a fair-sized loose-box, the 

 door was closed and I was quite alone with her for twenty 

 minutes. I then opened the door and led her out, using 



