YOUTHFUL HABITS. 103 



207. — So far as we have yet gone with the education of tlic 

 colt there has been little or no need for either whip or spur. The 

 main business has been to gain the coil's confidence, and to show 

 him that he will not necessarily he hurt by the closest and most 

 intimate contact with man. In our future dealings with him, it may 

 sometimes be necessary to meet fear with fear, and to appeal to 

 his ever present apprehension to drive him past a multitude of 

 dreaded objects, and to bring out his best powers in our i^ervice. 

 For this purpose the breaker had better now be armed with both 

 whip and spurs, provided, of course, that he has temper and 

 skill enough to avoid any senseless, passionate, or accidental 

 abuse of them. 



208. — Left to his own instincts, our two-year-old horse, that 

 has just been taught to carry a man with some confidence on his 

 back, would never go along a road at any steady pace. He would 

 gallop a short distance with his nose near the ground, then raising 

 his head high, would slacken his pace to a walk, get as far as he 

 could to one side of the road, stop and have a good look at some 

 object of alarm, start and stop again repeatedly, until the 

 suspicious object is passed, and then liound off at a gallop again. 

 In the service of man all this has to be altered. He must be 

 taught no longer to play the part of a timid idle fugitive, but to 

 lend his physical powers to carry the lord of the creation wherever 

 and however he pleases, regardless of a thousand objects which his 

 apprehensive nature prompts him to shun. 



209. — This is a very hard lesson for so timid and impulsive 

 an animal to learn ; but fortunately it can be made far more easy 

 and agreeable to him by calling in the aid of his strong gregarious 

 instinct, and giving him a companion which has learned to scorn 

 the objects of his juvenile fears. In the next lessons, he should be 

 ridden in company with a bold, well-broken, and well-ridden horse. 

 and one that can walk fast, as that is the first pace for any riding 

 horse to learn, and the only pace that a two-year-old horse should 

 be ridden at. A fast, steady, safe walk adds much to the value ot 

 any riding horse, and the longer a colt is kept at it, before he is 

 allowed to carry a rider at any other pace, the better and faster he 

 will be likely to walk. It is the pace at which a horse requires 



