The horse; his breeding, care and use by Buffum David

Author:Buffum, David
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Horses
Publisher: New York, Outing Publishing Company
Published: 1911-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

This Arrangement op the Foot-line Is Simple and Effective

customed to the sight of the revolving wheels and the other novel features of the situation. After a half-dozen lessons of this kind he will be ready for the breaking cart. This should have long shafts and it is better, for at least the first few lessons, to have a foot-line on the colt. This need be nothing more nor less than the same cord

you have used in bitting him tied to one fore foot before the fetlock, passed over the girth, and back into the cart. With this, if the colt tries to kick or run away, you have the means of stopping him at once by pulling up his foot and placing him upon three legs; it has this additional advantage that, while it greatly disconcerts him and robs him of his self-confidence, it does not hurt him nor rouse his resentment.

I have known horse-breakers to object to it on the plea that it may throw the colt down, but I have used it many years and have never known this to occur or any other injury to result from its use. The controller (described in a previous chapter) affords an equally certain means of control and on some specially intractable colts it may be found useful. But in ordinary cases, where the foot-line is merely a safeguard and is not for the correction of any confirmed vice, it makes a little less rigging to put on the colt and is fully as satisfactory to use.

A great many colts are spoiled by the breaker being in too great a hurry to get them into a four-wheeled vehicle. The colt should be used a long time in the breaking-cart and got thoroughly handy before harnessing to a buggy; then there is little danger in it.

As a general rule, one is liable to be a little

too anxious to get the colt to work. Quite aside from chances of overstrain in the case of animals that are broken when immature, it is safer to let the colt acquire his working habits gradually.

It is hardly possible and perhaps needless for me to take up all the minor points in breaking; on one matter, however, I think I should say a fe^f words, and that is in teaching the colt to back, I have often heard breakers say that " it takes a year to teach a colt to back properly "; whereas it can be taught readily in half an hour and I have often taught it in ten minutes. I may perhaps be excused for pointing out that there is some difference between ten minutes and a year. The best time to teach it is early in his training, before he has been harnessed to the cart.

TEACHING THE COLT TO BACK

Standing behind the colt, with the reins in your hands, pull back strongly but steadily upon them, saying " Back, back." Of course, the colt does not know what you mean, and he

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