My husband and I attended an auto swap meet yesterday, and we found this really cool book, published in 1889. It contains vet info on horses, cattle, sheep, poultry, swine, dogs, and birds.
It also has a section on horse training. Most of the training in this section we would now consider barbaric and cruel, as he advocated a lot of restraints, and some methods that are downright rough. It is wonderful to compare this to today's methods and know that our beloved horses are benefiting from the most humane methods in history, thanks to the pioneering of such great men as Tom and Bill Dorrance, Ray Hunt, and all the wonderful trainers who are carrying on this tradition. Some of the things that Oliver W. Gleason wrote, however, are timeless:
Never quarrel with your horse.
Never say whoa unless you want your horse to stop.
Bad hay is not cheap at any price.
To put an unwarmed bit in a horse's mouth in frosty weather is rank inhumanity.
Remember that you have no business trying to control a horse unless you can first control yourself.
And my favourite- if you have a horse which you want to match, don't tell the dealer or he will make you pay dearly for the size and colour.
1 comment:
What a great find! I agree the training way back when was not good at all. Glad to see times have changed.
Loved the sayings! When we are working in the cold we keep there headstalls in the truck floorboard where they are warm when we put them in.
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