12 



MODERN HORSE MANAGEMENT 



[CHAP. 



that he respects his trainer when kind to him, 

 and reasons that if he obeys his trainer he is 

 not punished ; that if he hurries home at meal 

 hour he will get his meal quicker ; that he can 

 free himself of pain by throwing the rider who 

 is abusing him ; that by coming over backwards, 

 when he is in anger, he can injure his rider. 

 It is also by his intelligence that he knows 

 when his rider is afraid on approaching a 

 difficult jump, and, in consequence, hesitates 

 himself to take the jump. When he is un- 

 educated, his intelligence is very slight, but it 

 increases as he becomes educated. 



If a horse who baulks is tied for several hours 

 alone at the spot where he baulks, the next time 

 he is driven past this spot he has sufficient intel- 

 ligence to go past, because he anticipates the 

 consequences. That clever horseman, Count 

 Martinengo Caesaresco, tells us of how a baulk- 

 ing horse will move forward the moment straw 

 placed beneath him is lighted, if he has had 

 previous experience with fire that had not been 

 underneath him. This is due to intelligence. 

 Caesaresco says : " The more intelligence and 

 memory a horse possesses the better he will be 

 able to learn, remember and execute what he is 

 taught." 



Fillis also declares that a horse has no love 

 for man, and gives examples. I have had several 

 horses that I claim have had a love for me 

 irrespective of feeding, because I have experi- 

 mented by not feeding them myself nor giving 

 them any tit-bits. I think it is clear that the 

 majority of horses have no love for man, except 

 the kind of love towards the man that feeds 

 them. I remember a two-year-old colt that 

 appeared always to be very fond of me, and yet 

 I never fed him. I left him for several months, 

 and upon quietly entering the stable one day, 

 not at his feeding hour, he took no notice of 

 the sound until he saw who it was, when he 

 whinnied and made quite a fuss until I went 

 up to him. 



42. A great many of the horse's actions are 

 caused through his instincts of fear and self- 

 preservation (the latter being well developed in 

 wild horses) and his instincts of his own needs 

 (feeding, etc.). 



As stated above, the horse has an extra- 

 ordinary imagination he magnifies everything 

 and this causes him to be very susceptible to 

 fear ; but this has its advantages, as it is one 

 of the reasons of our being able to train him. 

 He is extremely observant of minute details, and 

 things which would make little impression on 

 our minds will perhaps make a great impres- 

 sion upon his, so that it is often difficult to 

 discover what has caused a horse fear. 



43. Another most peculiar characteristic of 

 the horse is his intense excitability to motion 

 upon the slightest provocation. His excitability 

 to motion is the chief reason of his being the 



valuable animal that he is ; it is the basis on 

 which his training is founded, and on 

 which we are able to make him imagine that 

 we are superior in strength to him. A writer 

 declared that a horse cared for him only because 

 he fed him. I do not think that this man had 

 any true sympathy for the horse, and the horse 

 knew it. On the other hand, a dog will often 

 make a great friend of anyone who feeds it ; in 

 fact, few dogs will refuse food, whilst I have 

 owned and known of several horses that would 

 not feed at all from a stranger. I knew of one 

 horse that would not eat his feed if it had been 

 placed in the manger until he had been assured 

 by his master that the food was all right. I 

 expect he would have eaten it, however, if he 

 had been left for any length of time. A horse, 

 no doubt, likes to see his groom come in at feed- 

 hour, and shows pleasure by giving a neigh, but 

 a horse that is really fond of his master will 

 utter a little whinny whenever it sees him. I 

 have found this to be the case with a number 

 of intelligent horses. True affection between 

 man and horse is rare. 



44. The character of the horse depends, as in 

 human beings, greatly on his parents, but it 

 is also influenced to a marked degree by his 

 trainer. I claim that the intelligent horse 

 develops the character and habits of his master, 

 in some cases to a marked degree, and there is 

 absolutely no doubt that one can, by careful 

 observation, judge the type of man that has been 

 attending or training a certain horse. The horse 

 acquires the kind or cruel ways of his master ; 

 he acquires his master's temper and his charac- 

 ter in general. This, of course, will be more 

 marked in the case of an intelligent horse and 

 an exceptionally sympathetic and intelligent 

 master. In this latter case the horse has a strong 

 love for his master. Instances in the past have 

 been evident : masters have been injured, and 

 their horses have refused to leave them ; a 

 drunken master has fallen off his horse, and the 

 latter has stood by him for hours, without food, 

 watching over him. Instances are not un- 

 common of horses behaving in a most marvellous 

 manner when their masters have been in peril ; 

 and how soon the young horse realises he is not 

 going to be hurt when first handled by a modern 

 and intelligent horse-trainer a " wild " horse 

 may give in within five minutes of being caught. 

 The ordinary horse-breaker has quite a different 

 method of subduing : he causes the horse to 

 become frightened ; hence his powers of educat- 

 ing a horse are very limited and often only 

 temporary. 



45. Caesaresco evidently considers that horses 

 are naturally vicious. I do not believe that they 

 are naturally vicious, but that they may have a 

 predisposition to become so through having 

 parents that have been made vicious, and then 

 they may easily succumb to this habit. Almost 



