204 STICKING UP. 



With some few horses the habit becomes very inveterate and very 

 dangerous, and then the old rough rider's remedy must be resorted 

 to, but without the risk that he very unnecessarily incurs. 



464.— Put on a pair of blinkers with a severe curb bit. 

 Take your horse to a very deeply and uniformly covered dung 

 yard, or other very soft ground. Put on a pair of long reins, 

 and drive your horse about with them. In a good clear spot 

 check him, so as to make him rear, and when he rears pull him 

 over on his back. Repeat this until you- can get him to rear no 

 more. He will remember the lesson for ever afterwards, and will 

 probably never rear dangerously again. This is a very rough 

 lesson and unless the ground is very carefully chosen the horse 

 may be seriously injured by the high fall, but it is less dangerous, 

 even to the horse himself, to adopt this severe remedy than to 

 leave him to choose his own ground for a similar fall in 

 unskilled hands. A severe curb bit is always liable to make a 

 horse rear, and with such a bit a rearing horse should never be 

 trusted in unskilful hands. A loop bridle, a loop round the jaw, 

 or a ring bit, give great holding power without the same tendency 

 to cause rearing. 



STICKING UP 



465. — Or insisting upon going where they please, or upon 

 not going in any particular direction, is a vice very common with 

 badly broken horses, i.e., with horses that have been allowed to 

 find out their own power.. It must never be mistaken for jibbing, 

 which results from quite a different cause, and requires totally 

 different treatment. Jibbing comes from a want of confidence 

 in his own power ; '• sticking up " from too much faith in his own 

 power, and too little in yours. Sticking up is more often shown 

 in saddle than in harness, though it is common enough in both. 



466. — It may be shown in a hundred different ways and may 

 require a hundred different stratagems to overcome it, but there 

 are some rules that will apply to all cases. 



Never accept the horse's own challenge ; never make a 

 martyr of him ; never attack him in the way he expects to be 

 attacked, and has prepared to resist you. Never let the encounter 



