GOOD FORM.
CHAPTER XXV.
TRAINING.
The pleasures of instructing a young unbroken colt are so many and great, that my sole wonder is how owners of such animals can so often make up their minds to the demands of the professional breaker: an individual who, in many cases, deals harshly, and in many more with a lack of judgment which is as deplorable as it is common.
To enter minutely into the subject of breaking is not by any means my intention. Volumes might be written about it, and yet the difficulty which many persons experience in learning from books, might not even then be overcome. There are as many different ways of training a horse as there are of training an infant, and I cannot at all agree with the professedly wise ones who say that only one way can be correct. I have found a variety of methods answer almost equally well, and I may (in some instances) say, almost equally badly, also—because everything must depend upon the nature and disposition of the animal that is to be experimented upon.
Some children are naturally timid, shy, nervous, and retiring,
and cannot be taught at all except by gentle encouragement—a sort of continual leading onward, without any attempt to drive—while others are so sullen, obstinate, and ill-conditioned, that gentleness seems thrown away upon them, and nothing save fear and force are capable of accomplishing any good. So it is, precisely, with horses; but, just as instances of dogged obstinacy and evil disposition are happily rare among children of well-bred parents, so in like manner have I found it to be with colts that have come of a good stock. I may here take occasion to say, however, that even with the most viciously disposed animals, such as future experience proved to be incapable of anything either good or generous, I invariably commenced with—and persevered in—the very gentlest treatment, discarding all force, ignoring the uses of whip and spur, and seeking to subdue by the mildest and most kindly methods, until compelled to adopt severer ones by the hopelessly unimpressionable and intractable nature of some among my misguided charges. Having, then, found so wide a difference of temper and disposition to exist in the various animals with which I had to do, I long ago came to the conclusion that to lay down any fixed laws for training was mere fallacy and nonsense; the system that works admirably with one may prove a dead failure with another, and taking this into account I cannot, I think, do better in a chapter like the present, than state the plan on which I always began to work, and which, as a rule, I found to succeed, better than any other.
Advising you by my own experience, I should say never, when you can help it, submit young animals to a so-called professional breaker, but rather take them in hand yourself, and make up your mind to three things: first, to bring all the patience of which you are possessed to bear upon your task, to enable you to govern by gentleness and forbearance, and not by tyranny and wrath; second, that a colt must be so handled and trained that he shall never find out his own strength or power; and third, that you must give the pupil every opportunity of seeing, smelling, feeling, and hearing things that will at first be strange to him, remembering that it is by the exercise of these senses that horses form their judgment of surrounding objects.
I greatly object to the system of lungeing young horses in a circle, or ring. The evils of it are sufficiently manifested in mill-horses; but even these are suffered to walk their rounds, whereas the breaker compels the youngster to trot, and even to canter when going in a comparatively narrow circle. Injury to the sight is the very commonest result of the practice, and even if it does not show immediately, or at the time, it certainly will later on. To travel round and round at a quick rate in an ordinary ring, forces blood to a young animal’s brain, and the faster and more excited the pace the more certain will be the result. The optic nerves may be said to originate from the sensorium—being, in fact, a continuation of the brain proper—and whenever the nervous centre is congested, the sight is the first sense that becomes impaired. There are other evils also connected with the system into which I need not go; suffice it to say that I regard it as a highly objectionable one.
