4 The Horse and his Master 



forms habits without difficulty, much care should 

 be exercised in establishing only desirable ones. If 

 a desirable act is repeated, a good habit is formed, 

 whereas if the act is undesirable, the habit is bad. 

 To the horse, however, the habit is neither good nor 

 bad, but only his method of responding to treatment 

 or suggestion. 



When a habit is induced generation after genera- 

 tion, it has a tendency to be transmitted from parent 

 to offspring. There are many examples of this among 

 horses, such as the saddle gaits among saddle-bred 

 horses and high action among Hackney coach horses. 

 It is a comparatively easy matter to teach a saddle- 

 bred horse the various saddle gaits, whereas it would 

 be practically impossible to teach such gaits to a 

 trotting-bred horse. Hackney coach horses, having 

 been bred for action for many generations, often 

 possess much high knee and hock action from colt- 

 hood (Fig. 1). 



The horse has a good memory. — A habit when fully 

 established implies the use of the memory ; that is, 

 the horse must remember that certain commands or 

 signals call for certain acts. The horse has such a 

 good memory that what he fully understands he sel- 

 dom forgets. The vividness with which events are 

 retained depends on the intensity of the impression 

 and on repetition, or both. Intensity of impression 

 is more serviceable than repetition in fixing ideas in 

 the horse's mind. Painful lessons are long remem- 



