TO EDUCATE A HORSE NOT TO REAR UNDER THE SADDLE OR BEFORE A CARRIAGE.
Attach a small cord tightly around the swell of the body, tied with a loop-knot, and carry it back into the carriage. By doing this you prevent your horse from rearing, inasmuch as he is unable to expand his body, and, without doing so, it is impossible for him to rear. Simple as is this method, the reader, if he should have occasion to practice it, will find the idea of great value, as it will never fail to prove effectual in removing this, to say the least, unpleasant and often dangerous habit. It is possible that the habit might be broken up in other ways, but there are none so harmless and easy of application as is the one I have described.
My readers will, I doubt not, receive with kindly feelings not only the instructions on the important points of educating their horses to break off bad habits, but will profit by the ideas and examples given of the various means adopted by horse-handlers to create these habits. In the present instance, it is rarely, if ever, known that horses acquire the habit of rearing themselves, but are prompted so to do by the means used, viz., starting and stopping suddenly; pulling sharply on the reins, and then striking the animal with the whip, either of which is a sure and certain means of producing this result—that of causing the horse to rear up whenever you desire to move off.
The inconvenience and unpleasantness of such a habit are too plain to need more than a mention, besides its often occasioning great alarm to a timid driver; and the simple yet practical means I have given for breaking up the habit, will be found successful whenever it is tried, as it always should be where the habit exists.