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.”
A “High English” Guaranty.
A thrifty German truck farmer once called the writer to examine a newly bought work horse and to give him “a line” so that he would be able to get his money back from the dealer, the animal having proved unsound. “I have me a written guaranty and a witness that he been all right,” said he, “and now you help me oudt mit a line.” An examination showed that the horse was terribly afflicted with heaves, accompanied with coughing and passing of gas. He heaved so hard that his entire body shook, and the squeaking of the breathing apparatus was easily heard. Evidently the horse had been skilfully “shut” or doped by the seller, and now that the effects of the treatment had passed off the unsoundness showed up plainly. Asked for his “guaranty,” the farmer kept iterating and reiterating his statement that it was all right and duly witnessed. At last he produced it, and it read to this effect, “This horse is hereby guaranteed free from all encumbrances.”
“Do you know what ‘encumbrances’ means?” he was asked, and the answer was, “No, I don’t know such high English words, but I guess it means sound and all righdt in wint and limb, and to work, aind’t it?”
He got his “line,” and by paying $80 to boot brought back another horse with a less comprehensive but more satisfactory guaranty.
Moral: It is best to understand “high English” and the language and ways of the dealer when buying a horse at the yards, so that a written guaranty may really protect the buyer.
An Unsound Horse Sometimes a Good Bargain.
Some kinds of unsoundness render a horse useless for work on the hard streets of the city, yet do not unfit him for work on the soft land of the farm. Where this is the case, it will often pay the farmer whose pocketbook is not particularly well filled to pass by the young, soft, untried, expensive horses that have been specially fattened to bring high prices and buy a second-handed horse at a bargain price.