John Solomon Rarey

“ It is a great disadvantage in training a horse to have any one in the stable with you; you should be entirely alone, so as to have nothing but yourself to attract his attention. If he is wild, you will soon see him on the opposite side of the stable from you; and now is the time to use a little judgment. I should not want, for myself, more than half or three quarters of an hour to handle any kind of a colt, and have him running about in the stable after me ”

“ As long as you are calm, and 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 unfavourable 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. ”

“ Otherwise, when I add a text here within Wikisource parameters, it can be just as time consuming making the links fit in Wikipedia. I still try to be true to the underlying premise for "Transwiki": that those working on one project who see that something belongs on another cannot be expected to know the other project's rules and practices. The best consistency is achieved by people following an established process because it's good, not because there is a rule somewhere saying that that is the only way to do things. ”

“ If he is frightened at the object, he will not rest until he has touched it with his nose. You will see him begin to walk around the robe and snort, all the time getting a little closer, as if drawn up by some magic spell, until he finally gets within reach of it. He will then very cautiously stretch out his neck as far as he can reach, merely touching it with his nose, as though he thought it was ready to fly at him. ”

“ As soon as you have frightened him so that he will stand up straight and pay some attention to you, approach him again, and caress him a good deal more than you whipped him, then you will excite the two controlling passions of his nature, love and fear, and then he will love and fear you too, and, as soon as he learns what to do, will obey quickly. ”

“ The Arab and his children, the mare and her foal, inhabit the tent together; and although the colt and the mare's neck are often pillows for the children to roll upon, no accident ever occurs, the mare being as careful of the children as of the colt. Such is the mutual attachment between the horse and his master, that he will leave his companions at his master's call, ever glad to obey his voice. And when the Arab falls from his horse, and is unable to rise again, he will stand by him and neigh for assistance ”

“ Let one man lead the horse, to keep him gentle, while the other gradually works back with the lines till he can get behind and drive him. After you have driven him in this way a short distance, you can get into the sulky, and all will go right. It is very important to have your horse go gently when you first hitch him. After you have walked him awhile, there is not half so much danger of his scaring. Men do very wrong to jump up behind a horse to drive him as soon as they have him hitched. There are too many things for him to comprehend all at once. ”

“ Every one that has ever paid any attention to the horse, has noticed his natural inclination to smell everything which to him looks new and frightful. This is their strange mode of examining everything. ”

“ But happily for us, he has no consciousness of imposition, no thought of disobedience except by impulse caused by the violation of the law of his nature. Consequently, when disobedient, it is the fault of man.
Then, we can but come to the conclusion that, if a horse is not taken in a way at variance with the laws of his nature, he will do anything that he fully comprehends, without making any offer of resistance. ”

“ 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 practise what we could understand were we the horse, endeavouring by some simple means to work on his understanding rather than on the different parts of his body. All balked horses can be started true and steady in a few minutes' time; they are all willing to pull as soon as they know how, and I never yet found a balked horse that I could not teach to start his load in fifteen, and often less than three, minutes time. ”

“ It will do him no good, but an injury, to strike a blow, unless you can scare him; but if you succeed in scaring him, you can whip him without making him mad; for fear and anger never exist together in the horse, and as soon as one is visible, you will find that the other has disappeared. ”