Buying a Pair.
While a properly matched and trained pair of carriage horses should “act like one horse” when in motion, the buyer should be careful to examine each horse carefully “to halter.” The two animals should be capable of being harnessed to the carriage indifferently to the right or left, and no attention should be paid to the observations of the dealer, who may explain how they have been accustomed to be driven always on the same side, and who, as a rule, will harness the better one of the two horses on the left side, and the poorer one on the right. The examiner naturally pays most attention to the left horse, but he should examine each in a thorough manner, for it often happens when this is done that one horse is found to be of far inferior quality and of less value than its mate, on the “nigh side.”