Never spare hair; the substance is readily reproduced. It can be wished to be spared only to conceal the fact of an operation having been performed. Always refuse to become a party to dishonesty. Do what is necessary for the proper performance of your office. The removal of hair, which may otherwise interfere with your sight, is essential: therefore cut it off, regardless of any wish to the contrary.
Instruct your assistants beforehand how to cast the horse; leave that business to them: never meddle yourself. The writer has seen veterinary surgeons, in their operating dresses, push and haul with the utmost energy. Such silly people have doubtless thought themselves exalted by this exhibition of violence. It would have been more to their credit had they devoted half the energy to teaching their people beforehand. But in what condition must their hands and temper be after having taken a lead in a struggle with a horse for mastery!
A surgeon should always be cool. His head should direct his hand; his knife should be held lightly; his eye should be quick, and his mind prepared to meet any accident. He should do his office neatly, and, if possible, without soiling his person. The ripping cut and the bloody hands alone distinguish the ignorant butcher from the scientific operator.
During every operation enjoin the strictest silence upon the spectators. The horse is never vicious, but it is always timid. Sounds have a powerful effect upon animals which cannot understand speech. Every word uttered, even in a whisper, should be of assurance to the sufferer; for the horse is only to be feared in its efforts to escape from some supposed peril. It becomes mad in its alarm. It then puts forth its strength and exerts it without regard to consequences. Man has everything to hope from the fortitude and noble forbearance of the creature. It responds to kindness with something more than submission; it answers sympathy by the most entire confidence and utter dependence. The life, the feeling, the natural powers are all subservient to the great love which is embodied in a horse's attachment. There is not among created beings one which has so large a sympathy; the horse must attach itself to something; to love seems essential to its being. The stable in which it is captive the patient prisoner learns to regard, as it were, a palace. The pace is always more willing when returning to captivity; freedom has no charm; the field has no allurement to the horse which has lived any time in the most crimped, confined, and uncomfortable of stalls. It will quit the spring grass to be fastened once more in the place to which it has been accustomed and has grown attached.
Then, however much removed from itself, it must pour the richest of its affections on some animal, should man, in pride, refuse to accept the offering. Creatures the most opposite have been the horse's favorite. How often do we hear of the liking formed between a goat, a dog, a cat, and the horse! Love has a strange freemasonry of its own; how else can we account for the larger creature being able to make its longing understood by the smaller life? There may, however, be between animals some substitute for language; but we can hardly suppose any recognized signs exist between birds and the equine species. Yet a famous animal-painter had a pony which formed a violent and lasting affection for a bantam cock. These two used to march side by side up and down the field in which the larger animal was confined; for so very expansive is the horse's love that it will embrace not only its abode, but some life, however distant apparently from its own.
The voice of the person who is accustomed to groom and feed the animal, if he has been only ordinarily humane in the performance of his office, will at all times reassure the beating heart of a prostrated horse. But vast injustice to the animal's better qualities is done by the mode of casting it. It is violently jerked off its legs; by a sudden pull it is thrown "with a burster" upon its side. There it struggles. If mastery sides with the animal, then let the men be speedy in their flight. The quadruped, in its fear, designs no harm to any person. It means only to escape from the terrible danger which encompasses it. Still, it is regardless in its alarm, and may do more injury than the most evil intention could accomplish. There is an engraving of the method of casting horses commencing this chapter. Let the capable reader imagine the effect produced upon the timid quadruped when it is violently flung upon the earth with a sound well denominated "a burster."
The horse is much better made to lie down gently, after the method adopted by Mr. Rarey. Half, and far more than half, the terror excited by an operation may thus be avoided. The confusion and bustle, conjoined with violence, which naturally attend "casting," must make a lasting impression upon the retentive mind of the animal, and, we may suppose, must aggravate the pain, thus materially endangering the result of an operation. The hobbles may be fixed quite as readily when the horse is down as when the animal is standing. Nay, they may be fixed more readily, as the horse, when down, has lost three-fourths of its power.
Mr. Rarey's method of throwing the most unruly animal is thus described by that gentleman:—
"Everything that we want to teach the horse must be commenced in some way to give him an idea of what you want him to do, and then be repeated till he learns it perfectly. To make a horse lie down, bend his left fore leg and slip a loop over it, so that he cannot get it down. Then put a surcingle around his body, and fasten one end of a long strap around the other fore leg just above the hoof. Place the other end under the surcingle, so as to keep the strap in the right direction; take a short hold of it with your right hand; stand on the left side of the horse, grasp the bit in your left hand, pull steadily on the strap with your right; bear against his shoulder till you cause him to move. As soon as he lifts his weight, your pulling will raise the other foot, and he will have to come on his knees. Keep the strap tight in your hand, so that he cannot straighten his leg if he rises up. Hold him in this position, and turn his head toward you; bear against his side with your shoulder—not hard, but with a steady, equal pressure—and in about ten minutes he will lie down. As soon as he lies down he will be completely conquered, and you can handle him as you please. Take off the straps, and straighten out his legs; rub him lightly about the face and neck with your hand the way the hair lies; handle all his legs; and, after he has lain ten or twenty minutes, let him get up again. After resting him a short time, make him lie down as before. Repeat the operation three or four times, which will be sufficient for one lesson. Give him two lessons a day; and when you have given him four lessons, he will lie down by taking hold of one foot. As soon as he is well broken to lie down in this way, tap him on the opposite leg with a stick when you take hold of his foot, and in a few days he will lie down from the mere motion of the stick."
What prevents the hobbles being buckled on? What prevents all necessary arrangements being carried out? What, indeed, but the stubbornness inseparable from ignorance! Veterinary surgeons, as a rule, are not an educated class. In proportion as their information is limited, so is their adherence to established custom likely to be intractable.