There are timely facts that should be learned if someone gets a horse. These facts come from the Jesse Beery horse training manual. Jesse Beery was a famous horse trainer from the 1800s. Interestingly, Beery’s training methods are as powerful today as when Beery was alive.
Timely Fact #1:
Make your horse your friend, not your slave.
Timely Fact #2:
Almost every wrong act of the horse is caused by fear, excitement, or mismanagement. One harsh word will increase the pulse of a nervous horse ten beats a minute. Hoses know nothing about balking until forced into it by bad management. Any balky horse can be started steady and true in a few minutes. I never found one that I could not teach to start his load in fifteen minutes and usually in three.
Timely Fact #3:
Intelligent horsemen have learned that kickers, biters, and balkers are natural results of abuse. Not one horse in a hundred is vicious until made so by cruelty. Whipping a horse is as mean and senseless as whipping a baby, and that the most useful, obedient, and long-lived horses are those treated from birth with kindness and common sense.
Timely Fact #4:
The whip is the parent of stubbornness, but gentleness wins obedience. There is no such thing as balkiness in a horse that is kindly treated, and that gets an occasional apple, potato, or sugar from his master’s hand.
Timely Fact #5:
When a hose is afraid or excited, quiet him with kind words and caress. An excited horse is practically crazy, and to whip him is dangerous, foolish, and cruel. I have known a single blow of the whip to balk a spirited horse. Whipping a balky horse is barbarous and only increases balkiness.
