TRAINING ANIMALS

Waipa Post, Volume 36, Issue 2148, 24 April 1928, Page 2

TRAINING ANIMALS

USE KINDNESS INSTEAD OF KICKS. In most sections of agricultural practice we have made a decided advance, and it is somewhat singular that in the rearing, training, and breaking of animals, so conducive to the comfort or discomfort of man, we still pursue a course that is closely associated with the dark ages. One common foundation cause thaT; forms the basis of the non-success of many in the education of animals is the assumption that all animals at birth possess hereditary vice, and that that vice must be eradicated before the animal can become a useful servant to man. That is most certainly a mistake and one that leads to numerous evils. It is probably in the case of horses where the greatest mischief results. In the (education of a colt or a filly (or a young bull) the same care is needed as in that of a child. The disposition should be studied and defects eradicated by kind yet firm treatment. At present, if a foal is of a lively temperament, it is at once put down as vicious, and if either of its parents has shown what is mis-called vice, the result of mistaken brutality in their .education, then the foal’s liveliness is put down as hereditary vice, and a prolonged course of harsh conduct and beating is deemed necessary to effect a cure. If, on the other hand, the young animal is of a slow and heavy nature, it is erroneously supposed to be the result of vicious sullenness, and the same treatment as in the case of the lively foal is undertaken —harsh treatment and beating—to bring them into so-called subjection. In (each case this cruel discipline has just the opposite effect to that sought; hence we have sadly too many kicking, biting, jibbing, bolting horses.

In place of having horses which entertain affection for man, we have them in constant fear of a blow, and their worst actions, often leading to accident or death, are, too often, the result of this fear, possibly a movement of the driver not connected with them being mis-oonstrued into intention to inflict a blow. In the breaking and education of all young animals firmness should blend with kindness, but never with harshness or brutality.