20 



MODERN HORSE MANAGEMENT 



[chap. 



away, when he does stop and realises that he is 

 abandoned, feels great fear. All horses when in 

 fear like company, and even the voice of a master 

 will cause much comfort. A horse when in fear 

 should not be worked, and kind treatment alone 

 should be resorted to. Fear may be so great as 

 to cause trembling, and sometimes a rider can 

 feel the heart pulsations from his seat in the 

 saddle when the horse is in great fear. Horse 

 dealers who are up to almost any trick in order 

 to get a good price for a horse, frighten the 

 horse in order to make him go well and show 

 himself off and perhaps forget any little pain 

 causing lameness. 



Practically in all cases of fear there will be 

 a preliminary sign given by the horse, which 

 sign should be detected by all good horsemen, 

 so that they will know that the horse is becoming 

 frightened. 



77. The signs of fear are : intently looking or 

 listening in a certain direction, shown by the 

 horse holding his head high, ears pricked, and 

 by his standing, as it were, upon his toes ; mov- 

 ing his ears to and fro or bending his head and 

 neck in the direction of the object ; shying from 

 the object ; stopping or reducing the pace, and, 

 perhaps, rearing. An object advancing towards 

 him in front might cause him to rear. Other 

 signs are grunting, snorting, depressing the tail, 

 raising the tail high, and, if intense, trembling. 



Before we can prevent fear in a horse we 

 must gain his confidence and then his obedience. 

 Two young horses should not be driven together, 

 because the fear of one increases that of the 

 other. In the first place, the horse should be 

 taught in an enclosed school, where his attention 

 can be held, then led around streets, and finally 

 ridden. During the leading, the cavesson is used 

 with the help of one or two assistants. 



78. The means of preventing fear are : caress- 

 ing the horse and placing oneself between it and 

 the object causing the fear ; patience ; obedience ; 

 the company of another horse ; and the use of 

 voice-sounds. The presence of another horse is 

 of great value in causing a frightened horse to 

 follow through a gate, to go into water, etc. 



Principles of Training 



79. I do not intend giving here in detail the 

 methods of training the horse, but merely to give 

 a few words on the principles that should be 

 strictly adhered to in training this noble animal, 

 more with the idea of saving him from the 

 terrible abuse to which he is generally subjected. 

 In the past many wonderful horse-breakers, 

 using the term in its truest sense, have given per- 

 formances before the public ; these so-called 

 horse-trainers have based their principles upon 

 the idea of subduing their pupils by brute force, 

 by exhaustion, and by fear. A horse that has 

 been broken by being subdued will never be the 



same animal as one that has been educated and 

 trained on modern lines. Their object was to 

 break the horse's will and to overcome his 

 physical power ; these two qualifications are 

 absolutely essential in the horse ; but when these 

 are not present the horse's value is incalculably 

 decreased. 



80. The principles of modern horse-training are 

 to retain all the fine qualities that the horse pos- 

 sesses and to educate him, and to control, govern, 

 direct and manage him by skill, knowledge, tact, 

 patience and self-control. There are few men in 

 the world who are competent to handle and 

 educate a horse, because so few make any effort 

 to know the horse as he should be known. A 

 horse-trainer should know his own weak points, 

 because any display of weakness of character 

 will quickly be picked up by the equine pupil. 

 He must iiave perfect control over himself and 

 have wonderful patience ; he must have pluck, 

 and be quiet and gentle yet firm. He must also 

 know how to display his apparent superiority 

 of strength before the horses by not asking that 

 horse to do anything that he cannot prevent him 

 from reacting against. He must know just how 

 to combat the horse's strength, without resorting 

 to any cruelty. It must also be remembered that 

 no two horses are alike, therefore it is foolish 

 and brutal to punish one horse because he does 

 not learn his work as quickly as another. 

 Gentleness must always exist. Because we have 

 the power of brutally ill-treating a horse, it is 

 all the more necessary that we should take every 

 precaution to educate him by humane methods 

 only. Humane methods are really the only per- 

 manent and successful ones, because our prin- 

 ciple is to gain confidence and obedience, to 

 dissipate fear, and then to train the horse 

 mentally and physically. 



81. "Wild" horses require much kindness to 

 commence with in order to gain love and respect 

 and to lose fear. A very little slip while train- 

 ing a " wild " horse may cause loss of confidence. 

 The whole secret of gaining success in training 

 horses to any really permanent and advanced 

 degree is to understand the horse's nature, to 

 remember that he is not naturally vicious or 

 wild. In training the so-called wild horse, i.e. 

 one that has been born and bred away from 

 human life, as on the prairie, the above fact 

 must be borne in mind all the more. It was not 

 until Professors McGillivray and Skuthorp and a 

 few others showed their wonderful methods to 

 the public that horse-owners would believe that 

 these horses could be trained by absolute kind- 

 ness from the very first. 



Rarey, Sample, Hyland, Leightwark and 

 Galvayn, great as they were in their horse-break- 

 ing methods, resorted to the principle of subdu- 

 ing the horse first of all ; hence their success 

 never reached the stage to which that of McGil- 

 livray and Skuthorp reached. These modern 



