CAPPED HOCK. 393 
reason diminishes. Animals have passions; these man can, in himself, 
subdue with reason; but the poor horse has no reason to restrain its 
emotions. Fear, once awakened, unopposed, possesses it; it begins to 
kick before it knows why. Bodies of men are exposed to panics. Can 
we wonder, therefore, at a timid and unreasoning animal being subject 
to the same influences? The kicking commenced, terror spreads; and a 
whole stable full of horses, each chained to its stall, each alone, forbid- 
den the consolation of society, and prevented from scampering from the 
unknown horror, takes up the action; thus ‘thirty or forty horses may be 
heard, in the depth and darkness of a night, kicking at the same time. 
The hind legs, when forcibly projected, are apt to hit the point of the 
hock; the bursa there developed is injured by the blow, and a capped 
limb is the consequence. 
Another cause is kicking while in harness. This habit is always 
attributed to vice: to speak of vice as associated with the ideas of a 
simple animal is purely ridiculous. Fear is a much more probable cause, 
if man would only expand his understanding to comprehend the motives 
likely to actuate an unreasoning creature; vice is far too heroic an 
impulse, far too human a failing, for the horse to embody. Fear is 
essentially an animal passion; that some mighty influence agitates the 
quadruped, when it begins to kick in harness, is proved by the serious 
accidents the horse encounters through this habit. No life can be care- 
less of its own existence; all creatures are conservatives where their 
own being is concerned. Would mankind only admit this fact, and seek 
to gain the confidence of, as they now labor to establish authority over, 
the horse, gentle words, spoken when the impulse was awakened, might 
reassure the animal, and would thus frequently save the owner from 
impending danger. 
A third cause is lazy drivers riding on cart-horses, when unhooked, 
as leaders of the wagon; the poles, called spreaders, which keep the 
chains asunder, frequently hang so low that, at every movement of the leg, 
they strike the point of the hock. The uneven paving of some stables 
is likewise said to produce the disease; in short, anything which may 
cause the point of the calcis to suffer violence will produce a capped hock. 
The cure for capped hock has been differently directed. Some hobble 
the hind legs of the horse, to prevent its kicking in the night; some 
fasten a chain and a log to one hind limb, for the same purpose; others 
suspend a piece of loose cloth at the back of the horse; but the best 
plan is always to leave a lantern lighted in the stable. The power to 
see around reassures timidity, while darkness is an awful instigator of 
terror; horses often fly back in their stalls, but never kick, during 
daylight. 
