Caress him kindly, and if he
don't understand at once what you want him to do he will not be so much
excited as to jump and break things, and do everything wrong through fear.
As long as you are calm and can keep down the excitement of the horse,
there are ten chances to have him understand you, where there would not be
one under harsh treatment, and then the little _flare up_ would not carry
with it any unfavorable recollections, and he would soon forget all about
it, and learn to pull true. Almost every wrong act the horse commits is
from mismanagement, fear or excitement; one harsh word will so excite a
nervous horse as to increase his pulse ten beats in a minute.
When we remember that we are dealing with dumb brutes, and reflect how
difficult it must be for them to understand our motions, signs and
language, we should never get out of patience with them because they don't
understand us, or wonder at their doing things wrong. With all our
intellect, if we were placed in the horse's situation, it would be
difficult for us to understand the driving of some foreigner, of foreign
ways and foreign language. We should always recollect that our ways and
language are just as foreign and unknown to the horse as any language in
the world is to us, and should try to practice what we could understand,
were we the horse, endeavoring by some simple means to work on his
understanding rather than on the different parts of his body.
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