SHYING HORSES.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XVI, Issue 5196, 2 December 1895, Page 3

SHYING HORSES.

(" tI.R.C. I'.S." in the Murk last Express) Horses shy from a variety of ■ widely-different rauses, and tho prescription that would lit one enso might bo totally inadequate for another, There arc some few causes in which tho best prescription would be a new wliip. These are, however, very few, and in the majority of cases kindness and patience pays best. Many horses shy from defective vision, and when it is a enso of bad eyesight it is obviously useless to apply punishment, and wrong to desci'ibo shying as a vice. It is no more a vice for a horse to jump on one side to clear some object the outlino of which he cannot clearly make out than it is for a half blind man to suddenly pause or make a side movement when he finds himself on the point of running into something that presents itself suddenly to his view. Cataract causes shying, by the animal coming suddenly upon objects that he only sees imperfectly, owing to his defective vision. Where there is complete opacity of tho crystalline lens, tho horse is, of course blind, and does not shy, because he does not see; but it is the incipient and small cataracts that cause shying, by partially obstructing (lie vision, These are very difficult to detect without the aid of the ophthalmoscope, and it is pretty certain that many horses are affected with cataract, or in other ways suffer from defective vision, without their owners being aware of the fact, and that confirmed shying is frequently punished as a vice, There is no cure for this kind of shying, because there is no cure for cataract. But we know perfectly well that many inveterate shyers have perfectly sound eyes, and in many of this class, it proceeds from nervousness, Here, again, whip is worse than useless, and the only prescription is Patience—with a big P. The thing then, is to noto objects to which the animal takes exception, to bring him slowly up to them, and, by permitting a close inspection, allow tho animal to become familiar with them, and convinced of their harmlessncs. There are two objects that we never think of taking a horse past at a rapid pace until quite sure thai the animal cares nothing about them; these are a donkey and an upturned wheelbarrow, two things that have caused numerous accidents with nervous horses. With an animal of this class whip, at the moment of shying, associates punishment with the object 111 the horse's mind, and aggravates matters by making him still more afraid. There is nothing better than a detailed inspection, and hence familiarity, There is yet a third class that shies out of pure "cussedness" These animals see visions and pretend to be awfully frightened, when fresh, of objects they entirely ignore when tired. When wo have a horse that pretends to be afraid of something when going away from home that he walks boldly up to when returning we prescribe whip and administer it freely. There are some brutes that will shy at a hay-stack one half hour and start devouring it the next.