Take a small cord, ten to twelve feet long, divide it in the center; then place the center back of the ears, cross it in the mouth, then bring both ends along the neck to the withers, and tie a knot, thus forming a powerful bridle, sufficient to ride the most vicious animal.
Sacred history contains the declaration that there is “the bridle for the horse, the whip for the ass, and the rod for the fool’s back,” and, while writing my book, I have often thought of the first portion of that quotation. The power of the bridle in controlling the horse is really wonderful, and the new forms of powerful bridles given in this work enable the most timid rider to secure the mastery of the most powerful animal. The one described above is excellent, and can never fail to give satisfaction when it is used as directed.
There is no exercise so invigorating and scarcely any so delightful as the manly one of riding the horse, yet three-quarters of the pleasure of equestrianism depends on the early training of the horse for this delightful exercise. The rider who feels that he has beneath him an animal obedient to his slightest wish, and which responds to a touch of the heel or the lightest pressure of the bit, moving to the lifting or the falling of the bridle, such a rider feels almost as though the horse on which he sits forms a portion of himself, and courses onward with a delightful sense of power and freedom. Nearly all of this excellence in a riding-horse depends on the way in which he has been educated while young. Faults then acquired may be corrected, it is true, in later years, yet it is far more desirable that they should never have been formed, but, in place thereof, the qualities secured which form the excellence of a horse.
I throw out these suggestions at this point, for I am now dealing with the early education of the colt; later in the book I shall have to speak more of faults to be corrected, and it is my wish to impress on my reader the great importance of the kind of education which the colt receives at his hands.
TO HALTER-BREAK A COLT, AND HITCH IN THE STABLE.
TO HALTER-BREAK AND HITCH A COLT IN THE STALL.