HORSE TAMING AND EDUCATING.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XIX, Issue XXI, 13 November 1897, Page 660

HORSE TAMING AND EDUCATING.

Professor Norton IS. Smith's exhibition of horse taming and educating is certainly the cleverest thing of its kind that we have seen in the colonies. The Auckland season opened at the Agricultural Hall on Saturday last before a large audience prepared to be severely critical of the Professor's profession, and at the close of the performance everyone was prepared to concede that his methods of subduing recalcitrant equines are marvellously effective. So far as one can judge, the Professor educates chiefly by mechanical means, so that there seems no reason why those who acquire the necessary dexterity in his methods may not become horsetamers themselves. The principle he adopts is to affix a simple form of breaking-in gear to the animals so that he has them entirely under his control. Then he proceeds to accustom them to all manner of startling sights ami sounds. Drums are beaten before and behind them, trumpets are blown, and tin kettles rattled, steam whistles in hal-a-dozen keys screech in their ears, crackers explode by hundreds at their feet, while masses of papers are shaken over their heads and umbrellas opened and shut in their faces. The first effect on the animals of this pandemonium of sounds and unusual apparatus is to make them terrified. They prance, and kick and buck as much as they can; but by degrees they learn to understand that all the din is quite harmless, and in the end it ceases to disturb them in the very least. This is the Professor’s way of earing nervous horses, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred it is nervousness that ails an intractable animal. In dealing with stubborn or vicious horses he slightly varies his methods, but the main feature of his plan is still to make the horses understand from the very outset that they are in the minds of their master. On Saturday both nervous horses and stubborn ones were dealt with, and while, in the case of the. latter, a short lesson wrought a wonderful improvement, the nervous horses were apparently cured completely. Anyone interested in horses should not. fail to pay a visit to Professor Smith.