' " W," OB BREAKING BIT. 89 



i 



(which is the real point to be attained) of submitting the head up 

 and back to the easy and flexible restraint of the bit, and give assur- 

 ance of having the horse entirely submissive to easy restraint of the 

 bit under any possible impulse of excitement. 



The common methods of -treatment are defective in various 

 ways, and are the direct causes of the many accidents and cases of 

 trouble experienced in the use of driving horses. The colt is simply 

 subjected a short time to a bitting-rig ; there is, perhaps, success in 

 driving him double, or putting him before the plow with another 

 horse, until gentle. It is a matter purely experimental, also, of 

 being hitched up single. If the colt is ! exceptionally intelligent 

 and good-tempered, by using extreme care there is perhaps success 

 in hitching him to a buggy. Now, if he moves off and finally drives 

 ordinarily well, he is presumed to be a gentle, broken horse. In- 

 deed, there would seem to be no other reasonable course of manage- 

 ment. This is the fatal error, and the prime cause of our trouble.. 

 To explain this, we will presume now to make an experiment or tWb. 

 The horse appears to be entirely gentle and manageable, and so he 

 is, as far as he has been trained. But let the rein be caught sud- 

 denly under the tail, let one of the traces get loose, the breeching^ 

 strap break, or some other derangement, in itself trifling, occur, and 

 the colt is startled, frightened, kicks by impulse^or springs ahead, to 

 free himself from the supposed danger. There is no assured control 

 by the bit ; he has never been made to feel 1 it ; the cbjdsequence is, 

 he rushes against it, runs away, and the horse is spoiled. And this is 

 about the history of nearly all runaway kickers, with their incidental 

 troubles. These were the horses I was almost constantly required 

 to experiment upon before my classes. And it always became a 

 matter of the greatest surprise to the best horsemen witnessing my 

 experiments, to see with what success I could drive such in a short 

 time, under the greatest excitement, entirely gentle, submitting 

 freely to what before would have made them kick and run away. 

 The secret of course was that I went to work first to remove the 

 cause in the most direct manner, thereby making the foundation for 

 greatly lessening the resistance to the bit. For example, if kicking, 

 was the cause of the indirect resistance, the first point I aimed at 

 was to overcome that, then to go directly to the control of the 

 mouth until successful. 



Now, these points were what a long course of, I may say, very 

 ignorant and often blind experimenting' forced me to learn. I was 

 soon Compelled from necessity, as stated, first to make the horse in 

 a general way perfectly gentle, and then come directly to the point 



