170 



MODERN HORSE MANAGEMENT 



[chap. 



ludicrous practice. The latter is responsible for 

 all kinds of disease, but it is the fashion. How- 

 ever dirty a tail may get, it is very rare that we 

 hear of any real trouble. In reality, horses that 

 suffer from itchy tails are generally well cared- 

 for, highly-fed ones, the disease being caused by 

 constitutional disturbance, and not outward 

 neglect. 



667. Excuse that it Strengthens the Hind- 

 quarters. — The above excuse is worse than none. 

 The veterinary profession, anatomists and phy- 

 siologists alike, has declared the utter foolish- 

 ness of such an excuse. People who are not 

 over-observant think this is the case even to-day, 

 because a horse that is docked shows off its 

 hams (buttocks) more and has the appearance 

 of being more cobby about the hindquarters. 

 When I mentioned this matter to Dr. Ruther- 

 ford, he laughed and said, "Why, you don't 

 believe it, do you? " 



I read a book the other day in which the 

 writer still accepted this excuse. He declared 

 that a draught-horse foal, if docked when young, 

 would grow stronger in the hindquarters. I 

 only ask those who have studied the anatomy 

 and physiology of the horse to consider this. I 

 thought that Fleming and other leading veterin- 

 aries had settled this years ago. The amount of 

 nourishment required to supply the end of a 

 natural tail is minute compared to the large 

 amount required by the hindquarters, which are 

 supplied by different arteries. The large artery 

 that feeds these arteries is one of the largest in 

 the body, so I do not think it would be taxed 

 to this extent. I suspect those espousing such 

 views confound a totally different physiological 

 function, that, namely, in which one kidney 

 grows larger when the other has been removed. 

 This happens because the one has to do the work 

 of both, whilst in the case of the tail there is 

 plenty of nourishment to supply the tail and 

 hindquarters ; besides, if one went without, it 

 would be the tail, and not the quarters, because 

 the former is farther from the heart. Might I 

 ask people with such extraordinary views how 

 it is that the best standard-breds have better 

 quarters than most hackneys (P. 19, li2a), and 

 why Suffolk Punches and the undocked Per- 

 cherons (P. Ii2a, 1266, 140a) have generally 

 better quarters than the docked Clydes and 

 shires? Besides, all the best Clydes and shires 

 in Canada, with a few exceptions, have been 

 docked when at the age of three or four 

 years. 



The farmer in the States or Canada does not 

 believe in making his horse hideous to comply 

 with a barbarous practice, nor of depriving them 

 and torturing them ; but in every city we find a 

 few horse-dealers who buy these horses and dock 

 them. There has been, however, a great change 

 in the cities of Canada during the past few years. 

 The average man who buys these horses is not 



humane enough to refuse to acquire them, partly 

 because it is fashionable to exhibit them in the 

 horse show. 



668. The Safety Excuse in Driving. — The 

 excuse that a long-tailed horse is dangerous to 

 drive, for fear the tail may get over the reins, 

 is as superstitious as the excuse that it is danger- 

 ous to walk underneath a ladder lest it may 

 fall on the wayfarer. All things are possible. 

 People who use the excuse have a limited know- 

 ledge of what a properly-trained horse is, and of 

 the methods of training a horse properly. The 

 rein excuse explodes when we visit the United 

 States, Canada, India, Russia, Arabia, and other 

 countries. 



By statistics I find that there are 100,000,000 

 horses in the world ; 25,000,000 of these are in 

 the United States and Canada ; of these about 

 99 per cent, are undocked ; and 90 per cent, of 

 these are used in harness work. This means 

 that there are over 22,000,000 undocked harness 

 horses in the States and Canada. 



I ask the English coach-driver, who still says 

 that he must have his horses docked: Are you 

 a worse driver than your American cousin, or 

 are you too slow in changing to more humane 

 and modern customs? I think the latter. 



The docked hackney is now driven in the 

 American buggy ; hence, away must go the old 

 dog-cart excuse. The dump, tip, or tumble cart 

 (P. liSe) scarcely exists on the American con- 

 tinent, yet heavy draught horses, used for show 

 purposes, are docked. The dump cart excuse 

 cannot be used. 



669. There are Four Important Points : 



1. My own experience has been that horses 

 driven in English vehicles are less liable to get 

 their tails over the reins ; yet most American 

 horses, as stated above, are undocked. 



2. California has the largest number of 

 coaches and four in the world, yet docked horses 

 are forbidden in this State, and the penalty is 

 two years' penal servitude. 



3. Docking is not the way to make a tail safe ; 

 but the tail of a horse that has learned the habit, 

 through bad driving, of endeavouring to grab the 

 reins can be made quite safe by resorting to the 

 simple operation of dividing the under muscles 

 of the tail, as explained in Chapter XII. 



4. To fit the boot to the foot seems more 

 humane than to fit the foot to the boot. So that 

 if there are any kinds of vehicles that are not 

 safe — which is not the truth — it would be better, 

 and the only legal method to adopt, to alter 

 the vehicle by raising the dashboard, or to 

 have some other arrangement attached to the 

 harness. 



Undocked horses are a dozen times more 

 common in England now than they were six 

 years ago ; do we hear of more rein trouble? 

 Do we ever hear of such trouble in the United 

 States? Not as often as we used to with docked 



