CHAPTER XII. 



HOW TO BBEAK AND USE A HORtiS. 



K'HAT 18 REQtTEED IN A WELL-BROKEN HORSE— HIS EDUOATIO* SHOULI 

 OOMMENCK WHEN A COLT — BITTING — PUTTING HIM IN HARNESS — HOW TO 

 USB A HORSE — TRAVELLING— WORKING — PLEASURE HORSES — PUNISHMENTS 



It is not too mucli to say, that not one horse in a hun- 

 dred, if one in a thousand, in the United States, is ever 

 properly broken ; or one in fift}^, when offered for sale as 

 a finished horse, entered in the merest rudiments of his 

 education. Horses in America, — we cannot say wherefore, 

 but, perhaps, from the general absence of a very high de- 

 gree of blood, from the general absence of extremely high 

 and stimulating feeding and grooming, which not onl^ 

 act directly on the individual horse, but exert an influence, 

 increasing generation after generation, over the progeny 

 )f horses long kept up in an unnatural condition, — are 

 very rarely actively, and almost never savagely, vicious. 

 Nothing more than this, as a general thing, is required. 

 If a horse will carry his rider without kicking him over 

 his head, or draw him in his wagon or buggy without 

 kicking it to shivers ; if he will go off at a walk, increase 

 his speed to the top of his gait, and stop again when pulled 

 upon, without running away ; if he will hold back going 

 down hill, and if ho will not balk going up hill; and 

 more particularly, if he will stand at a door without tying, 

 he is held tc be fully broken, and is willingly received, 

 credited, and paid for as such. 



It is needless, however, to say to a real horseman, that 

 Buch a horse is as far as possible from being broken at all, 

 espocially fjom being well broken. To l»e really well brokeni 



C161] 



