BREAKING WILD HORSES

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 48, 25 August 1923, Page 14

BREAKING WILD HORSES

HOW IT IS DONE.

Few people at a horse show realise the many difficulties, and in some cases the danger, incurred in training horses so that they can be ridden and driven. It takes at least six months before they can be handled properly,, and it is.a task that requires great patience,, declares Leonard Fleming in the "Daily Mail." Colonial horses are perhaps more difficult to deal with than those bred in England, for in the Dominions the farms are large and the young horses have been .running wild since they" were foals, and have never had. a hand upon them. Sometimes it-takes days to drive them into the catching yard. Again and again these high • spirited youngsters break back, at the gate, tails up, nostrils distended, back for many miles'at full gallop. ■ '

1 Once" inside the yard, a restless mass of kicking, biting horseflesh, one of theih is_ caught by a running noose at the end of a twelve-foot stick. The noose is" placed over the head on to tho neck, two or three men grasp the end of the rope, and then begins a tussle that may last an hour or only a few minutes; there are no' two horses alike and no two horses ever put up quite the same fight.

. And this'particular moment is the most critical one of all. • The horse— bucking, rearing, chopping with its forelegs—half mad with rage, exerts every ounce of 'its strength to get away. For the first time in its life its freedom has been challenged. If it beats you ,now it will always remember it, and it will try to beat you again. ' The men at the end of the rope are being pulled about as though they weighed nothing, but gradually •they-'-aroj getting nearer and nearer along the rope to the horse's head. > '

.The horse throws; himself down. In' an instant one man is kneeling on the neck, another quickly'pulls the tail up through ,'the hind legsi and holds it tightly against the flank from behind; and this is a good "lock." The.horse has lost at least, three-quarters of its power. .'• - -

For training to saddle, a young horse ,is frequently "coupled" to an old horse, neck to neck. It, is thus impossible for it to break away. For training to drive, it is 'first made accustomed to the feel, of the. harness, and then it is made to. pull at the branch of a tree or a' polo—something which it cannot break. > At'the end of six months your well-trained horse will respond to the least pressure of any one finger on a rein.' .■■■..