Chapter I: Preface

The reader, after having perused the present volume, may imagine the writer should have been more explicit when advertising the book’s intentions, that a mass of speculative novelty should not have been hastily intruded upon the general public. Such, probably, will be the primary impression of most purchasers. The author, however, regrets he is by truth obliged to decline the compliment embodied in such a complaint. Those notions which, hurriedly regarded, appear as original, will, to the matured judgment, show only as an obvious result, worked out by the easy application of a single idea. Common sense embraces every merit in the ensuing pages. Grant this, and there remains no loftier claim to advance. The different chapters contain nothing which is not very superficial and entirely based upon fact. Every statement included in the following articles becomes plain and self-evident to the man who can release his mind from the trammels of conventionality, and will allow his conceptions to be shaped by the habits and the inclinations which are natural to the equine species.

No living creature could be more exposed to the willfulness of perversity than the horse has hitherto been. All around and about the quadruped was moulded by influences which never regard the instincts of the animal. Every incident, directly or remotely concerning its welfare, was misconstrued or misstated. In proof of this is the common belief that Arabia produces the perfection of the tribe. This opinion is not to be substantiated by investigation. It is accepted upon no positive evidence. It is opposed to deductions drawn from a notorious fact. The greater number of Arabian steeds are not much larger than ordinary ponies. The climate dwarfs the stature. Dwindled development is recognized as the established proof of an uncongenial location.

The Arab horse is undoubtedly the most beautiful and the most intelligent specimen of its race. Travelers assure us it lives beside its master. It is the companion of the man and the playmate of the child. The country may not be favorable to its bodily perfection; but the affections and the mental attributes of a dumb intelligence are in that land cultivated and enlarged. Arabia boasts possession of the most civilized race of quadrupeds which are known to mankind. Looking on the creatures of that country, the world can contemplate the money value of kindness, since the indulgence of this emotion can conceal a serious corporal defect!

Probably it may be urged such intimacy between the human being and the beast is compatible only with a wild and a half-savage state of society. But there exist other nations as unrefined; nay, many peoples are known to be more barbarous than are the Arabs. The animal, however, fares as badly with inhabitants of the uncultured as with people of the civilized regions. The absence or the presence of refinement does not influence the welfare of an equine slave. Then gentleness in the Arabian must be a purely responsive emotion. Its presence or its absence is apart from mental status, or the social distinctions of the population to whom it is subjected and by whom it is surrounded.

The horse, in Britain, generally occupies the same house as the groom; but it is not, therefore, regarded with the feeling which is indulged by the inhabitant of the tent. The change from the soil of its birth to the English stable is attended with a total alteration of circumstances. Coldness or brutality, however, cannot banish the spirit which benevolence had fostered. The rebellion provoked by harshness is only more complete. The quietude of content is replaced by the wildness of timidity. Confidence is destroyed; fear assumes the likeness of savagery. The horse becomes a brute; for ignorance will not believe its inferior can be actuated by a reasonable motive.

In India the cavalry are mounted upon half-bred Persian horses. Not a few of the officers, however, bestride chargers of pure Arabian blood. These last are commonly under the charge of European servants, and serve European masters. The animal’s nature changes with its location. The alteration, therefore, is independent of heat or of frost. The Arabs of India are as famed for ferocity as the creatures of the desert are notorious for gentleness of disposition.

The English behavior is chiefly shaped by selfishness, based upon a degraded superstition, which insists that every form of inferior existence was created for man’s use and relinquished to his pleasure. The author must leave to others the inquiry, whether Christianity invests those who profess to believe its doctrines with any power which can be separated from the potency of charity. It is not for him to decide whether the conduct of a half-savage and a pagan tribe should, in its fruits and in its results, shame the consequences produced by the acts of men who boast of education and worship the exemplification of self-sacrifice and of love.

Would man only be content to base observations upon fact, anatomy has for a sufficient period ascertained a circumstance which should have startled public wonder into exclamation. But, where the horse is involved, centuries of prejudice appear to have generated a slothfulness of comprehension which overpowers all ordinary intelligence. In a bird a similar development has for ages been accepted as the proof of peacefulness of disposition. The pigeon congregates in flocks; it lives on vegetable substances, and it possesses a liver which exhibits no gall-bladder. This deficiency and these habits apply to the horse as literally as to the feathered type of innocence. Perhaps the higher status of the quadruped might be urged as the ground of a primary title to human consideration. Yet the dove-cot would seem to have blinded man to the merits of the stable!

The horse possesses a full-sized liver; still the gland exhibits no receptacle in which any excess of biliary secretion may be retained. The testimony of nature associates the creatures which man views as opposites, or regards as the emblem of peace and as the living embodiment of inveterate vice. Sameness and dissimilarity appear oddly united when both lives are viewed as the creations of the Omniscient. Resemblance in body should direct recognition to a likeness in spirit. Bearing in mind by whose ordinization all facts originate; remembering how life in this world is linked by bonds more difficult to trace than a positive sameness; and admitting that the One Parent had a design in every part of the many forms which He called into existence,--human ignorance must be wrong when it refuses to acknowledge an identity thus plainly emphasized.

That the workings of mortal conception are peculiarly eccentric, or at all events that candid appreciation has not embraced the helpmate of man on earth, is established by every rule of right being perverted when the horse appears upon the scene. The spirit of perversion seems so powerful it involves even the people who act with the animal. When Mr. Rarey came to England, he was hailed as a wonder. Mr. Rarey is now away from these shores, and the persons who formerly acknowledged his genius now speak of the system which he publicly demonstrated, as a flagrant imposture!

Why is this? What causes such contradictory opinions? His present defamers declare Mr. Rarey to be a humbug, because horses, when returned to the former grooms and subjected to the former treatment, resume the former habits. Like causes in other spheres are admitted to produce like results. The animal merely responds to the conduct of those who surround it. Mr. Rarey tames by the exhibition of kindness. He convinces dumb intelligence how futile is resistance, and makes apparent the groundlessness of fear. It is not the spirit which he subdues, but it is the confidence which he gains. All his acts are dictated by a desire to banish distrust. The animal having learned its lesson is restored to its proprietor. But if the owner has not profited by the instruction which he also has witnessed, ought he to be surprised if his inferior should forget the lesson received?

Is there not something remorselessly evil in thus converting the bad conduct of mankind into a reason for denying the operation of an obvious goodness; in refusing to acknowledge the responsive nature of the companion specially given to soften the doom of the human race; and doing this only to warrant the insolence of severity, which would seem to be a failing inherent in mortal breasts? But the doctrines of love and of charity are, by many worthy individuals, supposed to apply only to the conduct of man to man. There, in general belief, begins and ends the lesson. Even at this late period it is often read but never understood that Universal Benevolence looked down and blessed every form of life which the Spirit had created.

To inculcate the Christian theory; to simply illustrate its wisdom, and to demonstrate the folly of verbally acknowledging its teaching, while the acts of its professed believers do not testify to its truth, has been the endeavor of the author. He imagines that possibly he may convince some reader of the loss which the existing customs entail upon society. He does not anticipate to actuate many purchasers; but should a few carry into practice one or two of his suggestions, and such innovations should upon trial prove successful, other experiments will be hazarded, until all meriting adoption are generally recognized.

But numerous readers, after having read the foregoing, may nevertheless be inclined to inquire, “What is the use of this fuss about morality, when the issue only involves _a horse_?” To this interrogatory the writer unhesitatingly replies, that the first and the most difficult teaching of civilization ever concerns man’s behavior to his inferiors. Make humanity gentle or reasonable toward animals, and strife or injustice between human beings would speedily terminate. But instruction to be effective should be convincing: therefore, purposely avoiding sentimentality, the author has sought to enlist the feeling only by satisfying the judgment.

Such are the purposes which induced “Horse Management” to be indited. But high as the object may be, the writer, when submitting his labors to the notice of the public, cannot otherwise than feel there is a common phrase, which passes current for criticism, and to which this book is peculiarly exposed. The colloquialism alluded to is the more insidious because it rather appeals to a prejudice than expresses anything absolute or definite. It rests upon a word in general use among the superficial of every profession, and that word is one which, in the public credulity, exalts the individual who abuses it. Let a medical practitioner study to master the rudiments of his calling, and the purpose of his assiduity will be whispered away by insinuations about the student being a most admirable theorist; but, unhappily, not being “a _practical_ man.”

Another individual shall earn disgrace at college. Yet this man shall start business to knock about the drugs and hack at living flesh, without comprehending the parts he is interfering with or having any knowledge of the medicines which he ventures to administer. This last person, though he neither adorns nor enlarges the sphere in which he acts, invariably attains the lucrative repute of being “a purely _practical_ man.” The notoriety brings profit to the object who merits no reward, while the absence of such fame acutely increases the sufferings of a deserving gentleman who had dared to brave the thorns which proverbially beset the pathway of desert to the recognition of society.

Against the facts declared in the present pages those who are interested to uphold existing foolish and cruel customs will probably urge their “_favorite phrase_.” To conceal its hollowness and to render acceptable its wholesale condemnation, it may be ushered in by an appearance of candor: thus, “Oh! the book is very pretty--nice reading--very humane--a little weak--rather overdone--too philanthropical, and wholly ‘_unpractical_.’ It teaches nothing which experience could adopt or which the thorough horseman can do more than laugh at. _Entirely unpractical._”

How long are men to be subjugated by mere verbal assertion? All this world has to boast of--all mighty truths, all great inventions--have originally had to _struggle_ against this “_practical_” bugbear, which ignorance sets up to frighten its fellows from those doctrines which aim at the amelioration of mankind. Recently it delayed the realization of railways. It has long opposed all social improvement; and as this is written it is being advanced as a barrier to Practical Christianity itself! Those who can regard the instruction of the Creator as too fine for the creature of his creation, may readily condemn all human promptings!

To deprive this phrase of its abuse and destroy its mysterious signification, let the reader quietly ask himself what is really meant by a thing, a book, or a doctrine being “_practical_.” If the word bears any construction, it obviously must imply that which can be used, or a lesson which is capable of being illustrated by performance. The test of “_practicability_,” then, resides in the sincerity of those endeavors which attempt to embody certain instructions. Where no wish to exemplify exists, of course no teaching can be “_practical_.” The proof, consequently, generally reposes with the person who advances the accusation, and the accuser is by this prejudice constituted judge of that he has already condemned.

What is there in the present volume or in the “Horse Doctor” which cannot possibly be enacted, supposing an actuating motive to influence the trial? Nothing can be practical if there be wanting the desire to embody particular directions; but to ascertain the value of a current phrase, he to whom it is addressed should ask for the special passage to which this condemnation pointedly alludes. If no specific warrant can be produced, a verdict merely founded upon generalities should never be accepted.

The author, when seeking to accomplish the evident purpose of the volume, deeply regrets those comments which a regard for correctness has compelled him to offer upon the present race of grooms. He can, however, with sincerity deny that the indulgence of dislike, or the gratification of malice, has induced him to travel beyond the limits of his subject. The men in this capacity occupy an unfortunate position. They and their interests range in the foremost rank of existing wrong. It is impossible to amend the regulations of any modern stable without removing some of this calling, or overthrowing some of the abuses, with a perpetuation of which the stable servant and his perquisites are directly involved. An earnest desire for improvement, therefore, compelled the review of that class who, if unassailed, were interested to be the most strenuous advocates of the bad usages which it was desired should be overthrown.

In conclusion, the getting up of the work bespeaks the care bestowed upon the volume by the publishers, to whom the author offers his most fervent acknowledgments. Nor can the writer bid adieu to his patrons without directing attention to the talent exhibited by the numerous artists and engravers whose labors adorn the pages of the present publication.

Norbury,
Lansdowne Road, Torquay.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The body of the horse anatomically considered 17

CHAPTER II.

Physic--The mode of administering it, and minor operations 53

CHAPTER III.

Shoeing--Its origin, its uses, and its varieties 95

CHAPTER IV.

The Teeth--Their natural growth, and the abuses to which they are liable 133

CHAPTER V.

Food--The fittest time for feeding, and the kind of food which the horse naturally consumes 168

CHAPTER VI.

The evils which are occasioned by modern stables 200

CHAPTER VII.

The faults inseparable from most present erections which are used as stables 233

CHAPTER VIII.

The so-called “incapacitating vices,” which are the results of injury or of disease 263

CHAPTER IX.

Stables as they should be 297

CHAPTER X.

Grooms--Their prejudices, their injuries, and their duties 327

CHAPTER XI.

Horse Dealers--Who they are, their mode of dealing, their profits, their morality, and their secrets 357

CHAPTER XII.

Points--Their relative importance, and where to look for their development 379

CHAPTER XIII.

Breeding--Its inconsistencies and its disappointments 427

CHAPTER XIV.

Breaking and Training--Their errors and their results 449

CHAPTER XV.

Carriages--Their cost, their make, their excellences, and their management 477

CHAPTER XVI.

Saddlery, Harness, and Stable Sundries--Of what these consist; their application and their preservation 494

INDEX 527

THE
ILLUSTRATED HORSE MANAGEMENT.