86 DANGER OF FEAR. 



rope, or harness, he will always associate such objects with 

 pain ; all his strong natural fears will be confirmed, and may, at 

 any time after, be exhibited in the most unsuspected and 

 dangerous manner, 



177. — The time and money spent in the education of 

 different horses, under widely diflPering circumstances, varies 

 almost as much as that which was spent respectively on Sara 

 Weller and the Prince of Wales ; but the object that must be 

 aimed at with all is to make the horse believe that he has no^ 

 power to resist the will of man, and that he may submit to him 

 without being hurt. The latter is by far the most difficult part 

 of the lesson. With at least nine horses out of ten their fear is 

 the only thing that you will have any difficulty in getting over. 

 Once convince them that you are not going to hurt them, and 

 you take away the danger of any frantic movements likely to hurt 

 you. The horse is neither a vindictive, an obstinate, a sulky, an 

 insensible, or a lazy animal ; although careless observers have put 

 him down for all these, and under that fatal mistake have adopted 

 practices only calculated to ruin an animal whose besetting weak- 

 ness is fear. We have seen a horse, in his first lessons, whealed 

 from head to foot by a brutal man without offering to move ; 

 although the same horse a month afterwards would run himself 

 to death rather than be touched with a whip. When first brought 

 into the clutches of man, and made to feel that escape is hopeless, 

 the most timid and sensitive wild horses are prone to be paralysed, 

 like a victim in the claws of a lion, and in that state will take no 

 notice of being torn or cut to pieces. The man who would whip 

 a horse in that pitiable condition should never be allowed to have 

 any animal in his power. 



We cannot pretend to explain all the strange action, or 

 want of action, we sometimes witness in our first contact with a 

 young horse. 



We have seen a few cases of even handled pets, who could 

 not have been paralysed with fear, who could not move at all with 

 anything on them that controlled the direction of their move- 

 ments. We have even seen them stand stock still, for nearly 

 half-an-hour, after everything was taken off them, evidently under 



