300 



kiiidlj, and if lie doesn't understand at once what jou 

 want him to do, he will not be so much excited as to jump 

 and break things, and do everything wrong through fear. 

 As long as you are calm, and keep down the excitement 

 of the horse, there are ten chances that you will make him 

 understand you, where there would not be one under harsh 

 treatment ; and then the little flare up will not carry with 

 it any unfavorable recollections, and be will soon forget all 

 about it, and learn to pull trulj^. Almost every wrong act 

 the horse commits is from mismanagement, fear, or excite- 

 ment : one harsh word will so excite a nervous horse as to 

 increase his pulse ten beats in a minute. 



When we remember that we are dealing with dumb 

 brutes, and reflect how difficult it must be for them to un- 

 derstand our motions, signs, and language, we should 

 never get out of patience with them because they don't 

 understand us, or wonder at their doing things wrong. 

 With all our intellect, if we were placed in the horse's 

 situation, it would be difficult for us to understand the 

 driving of some foreigner, of foreign ways and foreign lan- 

 guage. We should always recollect that our ways and 

 language are just as foreign and unknown to the horse as 

 any language in the world is to us, and should try to prac- 

 tise what we could understand, were we the horse, endeav- 

 oring by some simple means to work on his understanding 

 rather than on the different parts of his body. All baulked 

 horses can be started true and stead}^ in a few minutes' 

 time: they are all willing to pull as soon as they know 

 how, and I never yet found a baulked horse that I could 

 not teach to start his load in fifteen, and often less than 

 three, minutes' time. 



Almost any team, when first baulked, will start kindly, 

 if you let them stand five or ten minutes, as though there 

 was nothing wrong, and then speak to them with a steady 



