CLAIM J-'OR INDULGENCE, 1 G'J 



power were disputed, or to give up his much prized liberty to the 

 restraint of a rope that he could break with half his weight ; but 

 it may take months to give him so much confidence in his own 

 power as to inducL' him to exert it, patiently and repeatedly, 

 in one direction, long enough to remove a heavy resisting object, 

 and one minute's tlioughtless passion may render this ever after- 

 wards impossible. This want of confidence in himself, which 

 tells so much in our fa^'our in every other direction, is very 

 inconvenient here ; but surely we ought to deal patiently with a 

 weakness by which nature has placed the horse so helplessly and 

 completely in our power. 



377. — We have spared no space to make this subject 

 as clear as possible to all our readers, because it is the 

 most important subject in connection with the treatment 

 of the horse, and one which, if clearly understood, and con- . 

 sistently and patiently carried out, would add many millions 

 sterling to the value of the harness horses of the world, and 

 increase to an incalculable extent the comfort, safety, and mutual 

 confidence of horses and their drivers. Daily observation, too, in 

 every part of the world but too plainly shows how little the subject 

 is understood, and that nine out of ten drivers still expect to cure 

 a horse of jibbing by the very means that have made him a jib. 

 ^\e could add volumes of facts to illustrate the correctness of our 

 theory, and give hundreds of instances to show how certainly the 

 most unlikely horses can be made perfectly reliable at a pull if 

 properly treated from the first, but each reader's own experiments 

 will satisfy him better than any records of ours. 



378. — The education of the young horse, intended for draft, 

 may be the same up to a certain point as if he were intended for 

 saddle. All the careful, patient training we have advised (183 to 

 272) may be advantageously spent on any light horse, but the 

 more hasty methods (336 to 367) will answer quite as well in pre- 

 paring the horse for harness as for saddle ; and with the horse for 

 slow, heavy draft it is useless, and even injurious to spend much 

 time in giving the animal the fine mouth and gentle habits 

 required for a pleasant saddle horse. The average carter or plough 

 man. accustomed as they are to horses whose mouths have been 



