“When a horse has been picked out, he is sent to the training stables, and Captain Shea takes him in hand. The horse is set to tugging big loads, is punched, examined, trotted and exercised generally for fifteen days. Captain Shea has an old fire-engine at his quarters, and the horse is drilled with this, too, and is taught to notice and to mind the gong. If Captain Shea doesn't like the horse, the animal is sent back to the dealer or his former master. No horses are bought except on probation. If the horse seems to be a good one. Captain Shea sends him to some engine-house for practical trial. There the horse is made to do the same kind of work that other horses do, and if after fifteen days more the officer in command of the company doesn't like him, back he goes to the stables. It he is a very bad or stupid horse, the department rejects him finally. But the department has other uses for horses, of course, besides that of tugging engines and trucks to fires. It needs horses for supply wagons and in its repair shops, and in a great many other places, and if the horse can be used at all he is put at these kinds of work.”
When our friends reached the training school they were cordially welcomed by Captain Shea, to whom Mr. Graham presented a letter of introduction. Then they were shown through the establishment, and during the visit the Captain talked in a very interesting way about the intelligent animals which he had in charge.
“Some horses are kind o' dead like,” said he. “We coax 'em and show 'em over and over again what to do, but it's no use—they never know anything. Then an intelligent horse is sometimes vicious, and though very quick at getting to fires has some trick or other, so that we always have to be on the lookout. But a horse, if he's got the making of a good fire-horse in him, generally gets to learn his business in about three months. I have come to believe more and more that a horse is about as intelligent as a man. We can let some of 'em out in the street, and when they hear the gong sound they'll come back to the engine-house and get by the pole in a jiffy. Now you take a good horse for a tender, he don't wait for his driver to get into the seat, but out he goes when the engine goes, driver or no driver. A good tender horse'll never be more than 100 feet behind the engine as he goes down the street.
“A horse comes to know his feeding times, and he gets restless and uneasy when those times come, though I suppose all horses do the same. A fire-horse gets so accustomed to regularity, though, that he knows when he ought to be fed just as if he could read the clock. The driver generally feeds and takes care of the horses, though he consults with the company officer about what he shall give 'em. He puts the feed in the forward corner of the stall, opposite the corner across which the horse has to rush to his engine. Otherwise the latter corner would get slippery, and the horse would stumble as he dashed across it.
“One of the hardest things we have to teach a horse is to leave his food and get to the engine when the gong sounds. It's a good test of the stubbornness or docility of a horse, whichever way you've a mind to put it, whether he'll do this or not. There are a great many horses in the department that wont do it. Most of those which will, are the old horses. It annoys a real spirited horse to run out to the pole every don't get a chance to snap the collars, and at noontime it's generally a race between the men and the horses to see who gets to the pole first.”
