Therefore, in dealing with Mr. Rarey’s plan we are not wasting our time about a trick for conquering these rare exceptions incurably-savage horses but considering the principles of a universally applicable system for taming and training horses for man’s use, with a perfection of docility rarely found except in aged pet horses, and with a rapidity heretofore quite unknown.
The value of Mr. Rarey’s system consists in the fact that it may be taught to, and successfully practised by, a ploughboy of thirteen or fourteen for use on all except extremely vicious and powerful horses.
It requires patience it requires the habit of dealing with horses as well as coolness; but the real work is rather a matter of skill than strength. Not only have boys of five or six stone become successful horse-tamers, but ladies of high rank have in the course of ten minutes perfectly subdued and reduced to death-like calmness fiery blood-horses.
There can be very little doubt that most of the mysterious horse-whisperers relied for their power of subduing a vicious horse partly on the special personal influence already referred to, and partly on some one of those cruel modes of intimidating the animal. It has been observed that idiots can sometimes manage the most savage horses and bulls, and conciliate the most savage dogs at first sight.
The latest instantaneous system which acquired a certain degree of temporary popularity was that introduced from the western prairies, by Mr. Ellis, of Trinity College, Cambridge, which consisted in breathing into the nostrils of a colt, or buffalo colt, while its eyes were covered. But although on some animals this seemed to produce a soothing effect, on others it totally failed.
The writer in the Household Words article, to which I have already referred, tells how a coachman in Kent, who had been quite mastered by horses, called in the assistance of a professed whisperer. After his ghostly course the horses had the worst of it for two months, when their ill-humour returned, and the coachman himself immediately darkened his stable, and held what he termed a little conversation with them, which kept them placid till two more months had passed. He did not seem altogether to approve of the system, and plainly confessed that it was cruel. Putting shot in the ear is an old stupid and fatal trick of ignorant carters to cure a gibbing horse it cures and kills him too.
Bleeding a vicious horse has been recommended in German books on equitation. In the family Robinson Crusoe, paterfamilias conquers the quagga by biting its ear, and every farrier knows how to apply a twitch to a horse’s ear or nose to secure his quietness under an operation. A Mr. King, some years since, exhibited a learned horse, which he said he subdued by pinching a nerve of its mouth, called the nerve of susceptibility.
In Ireland as in England, the accepted modes of taming a determined colt, or vicious horse, are either by a resolute rider with whip and spur, and violent longeings, or by starving, physic, and sleepless nights. It was by these means combined that the well-known horseman, Bartley the bootmaker, twenty years ago, tamed a splendid thorough-bred horse, that had defied all the efforts of all the rough-riders of the Household Cavalry regiments.
