What is Overloading a Horse, and How 



Proved ? 



By GEORGE T. ANGELL, 



President of Uie A merican Humane Education Society, the Massachusetts 



Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Pare fit 



American Band of Mercy, 19. Milk Street, Boston. 



The following, taken from " Bishop on Statutory Crimes,^'' edi- 

 tion of 1873, P^ge 689, is believed to be sound law, the -world 

 overy on the above subject. 



It was written by Mr. Angell in reviewing a decision of a 

 Massachusetts Court in 1868 that there was no cruelty because 

 other horses of the same weight were able to draw the load in 

 question. // was the first and last decision of the kind ever ren- 

 dered in Massachusetts. 



"Must an animal be worked until he breaks a blood vessel or 

 drops dead, before the law takes cognizance .? Is the horse to 

 be strained, or worked to the extreme limit of his strength, be- 

 fore such straining or working becomes a cruelty (that is, before 

 the act of his master becomes 'overloading').'' Can an ex- 

 pert, or any number of experts, say what is the limit of strength 

 or endurance of any horse, simply by knowing his weight,'* It 

 seems to me that these questions can be easily answered. 

 Horses, like men, are of different ages, constitutions, tempera- 

 ments, formation, and degrees of strength. One horse, just like 

 one man, may be twice as fast, twice as tough, twice as strong, 

 as another of precisely the same weight ; and, inasmuch as horses, 

 like men, are liable to a great variety of sicknesses, and suffer, 

 just like men, from previous overworking and from heat, want 

 of proper rest, food, water, shelter, and care, it follows that the 

 same horse, like the same man, may be able to perform without 

 injury more labor in one day than another. 



" Can a thousand experts prove that all men of a given weight 

 or size are equally competent, on every day of the year, to per- 

 form a given labor ? Can their testimony establish how much 

 load a man of given weight should carry, and how far he should 

 carry it on a given day, without regard to whether the man is old 

 or young, sick or well, strong or weak, tough or tender, already 

 tired or rested, full-fed or starved, or the day hot or cold } And 

 does not precisely the same reason apply to the horse, — that 

 what one horse can do one day has no force in showing what an- 

 other ought to do 071 another day, unless you show the weather, 

 age, strength, toughness, and bodily condition of the two to 

 be precisely similar.'' I say, then, that it is just as impossible 

 for any number of experts, knowing only the weight or size of a 

 horse and nothing of his age, health, strength, toughness, and 

 "bodily condition, to establish what is, or is not, overloading 



