Nineteen years ago I bought in Madras a peculiar kind of horse. He had to be wound up to make him go. It was not a machine, but a veritable live horse.
When breaking him to go in the carriage he had been injured. An accident occurred in starting him the first time and he was thrown and hurt and frightened. It made him timid; afraid to start. After he had once started he would never balk, until taken out of the carriage. He would start and stop and go on as many times as you pleased, but it was very difficult to get him started at first each time he was harnessed to the carriage.
He was all right under the saddle, an excellent riding horse, and would carry me long distances in my district work, so that I did not wish to dispose of him; but I could not afford to keep two, whatever I had must go in carriage as well as ride, and I determined that I would conquer.
How I have worked over that horse! At first it sometimes took me an hour to get him started from my door. At last, after trying everything I had ever heard of, I hit upon an expedient that worked.
I took a strong bamboo stick two feet long and over an inch thick. A stout cord loop was passed through a hole two inches from its end. This loop we would slip over his left ear down to the roots and turn the stick round and round and twist it up.
It is said that a horse can retain but one idea at a time in its small brain. Soon the twisting would begin to hurt. His attention would be abstracted to the pain in his ear. He would forget all about a carriage being hitched to him, bend down his head and walk off as quiet as a lamb. When he had gone a rod the horse boy would begin to untwist, soon off would come the cord, and the horse would be all right for the day. The remedy never failed.
After having it on two or three times he objected to the operation, and would spring about and rear and twitch and back; anything but start ahead, to keep it from being applied. We would have, two of us, to begin to pat and rub about his neck and head. He would not know which had the key. All at once it would be on his ear and winding up. The moment it began to tighten he would be quiet, stand and bear it as long as he could, and then off he would go. It never took thirty seconds to get him off with the key. It would take an hour without. After a little he ceased objecting to have it put on. He seemed to say to himself, “I have got to give in and may as well do it at once,” but he would not start without the key. In a few months he got so that, as soon as we got into the carriage, he would bend down his head to have the key put on, and one or two turns of the key would be enough.
Then the key became unnecessary. He would bend down his head, tipping his left ear to the horse boy, who would take it in his hand and twist it, and off he would go.
My native neighbors said, “That horse must be wound up or he cannot run.” And it did seem to be so.
When he got so that the “winding up” was nothing but a form, I tried to break him of that, but could not succeed. I would pat him and talk to him and give him a little salt or sugar or bread, and then step quietly into the carriage and tell him to go. “No.” Coax him. “No.” Whip him. “No.” Legs braced, every muscle tense for resistance. A genuine balk. Stop and keep quiet for an instant and he would hold down his head, bend over his ear and look around for the horse boy appealingly, saying very earnestly by his actions, “Do please wind me up. I can’t go without, but I’ll go gladly if you will.” The moment his ear was touched and one twist given, off he would go as happy and contented as ever horse could be.