NOT CODDLED. 149 



Normandy;" and we fear that those whose real business is horse 

 taming, do not always sufficiently remember that the treatment, 

 necessary for the most daring, may not be right for the most 

 timid. 



- 330. — The horses of America, as a whole, are by no means 

 badly broken. The average riders are less graceful in their seat 

 than the English, less secure than the Australians. In harness, 

 more horses are driven without blinkers and without breechings 

 than in England, and more of them are wisely taught to let the 

 vehicles they draw press or knock against their hind quarters 

 without alarm. Such horses can be, and are, harnessed to 

 carriages too frail to suit an Englishman's ideas of safety. The 

 horses are not coddled and protected from every unorthodox 

 touch, but taught to expect and to bear it, and the result is that 

 they are safely driven in harness and in shafts that have a very 

 flimsy appearance. 



Inferior roads make weight of more consequence in America 

 than in England, whilst the very superior character of the wood 

 used makes it safe to trust to a very small quantity of it. To 

 meet the roughest roads the wheels are high and the axles wide, 

 and the drivers sit very low, showing that they have less fear of an 

 unruly horse than of an unequal road. 



331. — Jibbing is more common than in England or Scotland, 

 but by no means so prevalent as in Australia. The extensive 

 use of mules in the great civil war, as well as for shifting railway 

 waggons, and other work requiring a long, slow, waiting pull, gives 

 a visitor at least a suspicion that the horses are broken too 

 hastily to be reliable at a dead lift. Hasty breaking is not com- 

 patible with steady pulling, and although each American showman 

 has given us some almost worthless prescription for dealing with 

 a horse that has been spoiled as a puller, none of them have 

 clearly and strongly laid down the one golden rule by which all 

 such spoiling can be prevented, and horses taught to hang on to 

 a pull as long as mules (375). We do not underrate anything 

 that saves time in the education of a horse, but we venture to say 

 that anything that will prevent jibbing will save you more time 

 in the end, is of far more consequence, and more worthy the 

 earnest attention and patient trial of any nation. 



