282 HALTEB-PULLING. 



the manger, thence back to the halter, and fasten. Thus 

 two important improvements were made ; namely, the seri- 

 ous objection of making the tail sore was removed ; and, 

 instead of tying directly to the post or manger, passing it 

 through the ring or hole in the manger, and tying to the 

 halter back of the jaw, the restraint was brought directly 

 upon the head as if ordinarily hitched, but with the advan- 

 tage of greatly disabling and punishing, while the horse 

 could not strain or injure himself in the least, no matter 

 how hard he pulled. 



If the subject were a colt, the moment there was an ef- 

 fort to pull, the sudden tightening of the cord around the 

 body frightened and hurt him so much that it compelled an 

 instantaneous jumping ahead, and after repeating two or 

 three times, all inclination to pull was entirely overcome. 

 It was necessary to hitch him in this way only a few times, 

 when he could be tied by the halter directly, without know- 

 ing it was possible to pull. If while hitched in this man- 

 ner he was frightened by a robe, or a piece of paper coming 

 suddenly in front of him, he wag soon convinced of his in- 

 ability to pull loose, and consequently the inclination to do 

 so was overcome. 



For especially bad, sullen pullers, however, I found this 

 was not of itself sufficient to break up the habit. It was 

 easy, of course, to prevent the horse from pulling while the 

 rig was on, but when taken off, and the horse tied as usual 

 by the halter, there was liability of his again repeating the 

 pulling. To overcome this difficulty, I was led to the ex- 

 pedient, when there was an effort to pull, of inflicting such 

 intense pain as to disconcert the horse from his purpose, 

 even while under the greatest excitement, and on this point 

 I was successful. To give something of an idea how I was 

 led to do this, I will refer to a chance incident : 



Two colts that pulled very hard upon the halter one 



