30 MENTAL QUALITIES OF THE HORSE. 



have been contracted, has an increasingly bad effect on him 

 the longer it is continued. 



Sulkiness or obstinacy in the horse, which we may regard 

 as the antithesis to " courage " {see page 26), is of various 

 forms, is produced by many different causes, and is often 

 complex in its nature. It may be entirely due to natural 

 impatience of control, as I have frequently seen in freshly- 

 caught animals, which, when haltered for the first time, on 

 finding that they could not escape, have thrown themselves 

 down on the ground and refused to move. In such cases, 

 as indicated on page 8, it increases with age. It may be 

 acquired, as we may find any day on the racecourse among 

 animals which have been rendered " faint-hearted " by 

 " punishment." Many of these poor things show by the 

 tumultuous beating of their hearts that fear — from the 

 mental association of their surroundings with the idea of 

 pain — and also, most probably, the feeling of injustice, are 

 the causes of their not " trying." A tendency to " faint- 

 heartedness " is often inherited ; stubbornness may be the 

 result of a habit which, for instance, a timid rider or driver 

 has allowed the horse to acquire by giving it too much of 

 its own way. In jibbers, we may see many degrees of this 

 particularly bad habit, which, other things being equal, is 

 difficult to overcome in proportion to the severity and 

 frequency of the successful contests which the horse has 

 had with his would-be master. Here, the employment of 

 ineffectual punishment or of unavailing force serves only to 

 increase the horse's knowledge of his own power, which we 

 should always strive to withhold from him. If horses could 

 reason better than they do, the vice of jibbing would un- 



