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GENTLING, BREAKING, AND TRAINING. 497 



It is comparatively a rare thing in this country to meet 

 ^"ith a man that has taken pains to inform himself thor- 

 oughly concerning the best modes of gentling the horse and 

 training him for the different uses. The common-*r-we had 

 almost said the nearly universal — practice is to let the colt 

 run unbroken until he is considered of suitable age to be 

 put to work, and then to harness him forthwith beside some 

 sedate old horse in a large wagon, and reduce him to sub- 

 mission at once. This is a very injudicious process, to say 

 the least of it, often proving dangerous to the other horse, 

 or the manager of the team, and still more frequently ending 

 in sad injury to the colt. Nor is it a successful method. 

 Few colts can be said to be well-broken, or safe, when brought 

 into service in so rapid and abrupt a manner. How many 

 horses there are spoiled in breaking, so that they are always 

 unreliable to work, or else can not be worked at all ! Such 

 will continue to be the case until a better and niore judicious 

 system prevails in regard to these matters. One horse out 

 of every Rve will be spoiled in breaking, either for the har- 

 ness or the saddle, or for both. The terrible case of lock- 

 jaw described in Chapter YII might be cited as an example 

 of the evils which flow from the unthoughtful management 

 so common among our farmers. 



The public mind does not seem to be educated up to the 

 level necessary for a proper understanding of this subject; 

 but probably this proceeds more from a lack of popular in- 

 formation concerning it than from any other circumstance. 

 It is certainly no small source of the difficulty that there is 

 so inconsiderable an amount of reading matter upon it ac- 

 cessible to the mass of farmers. We have no American 

 work on the horse treating of these topics at all, and but one 

 from abroad that has attained any respectable circulation in 

 our country ; and, although this is an invaluable authority, 

 in many respects, it is, upon the whole, illy adapted to the 

 peculiar wants of the horseman in America. The conse- 

 quence of this is, that here almost every man has his own 

 way, differing from that of all his neighbors, and no sys- 

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