The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1900-07-29

You can never even begin to under
stand horses until you have watched
them at grass throughout long summer
days. The understanding is more per-
feet if the watching begins early-say
when the foal is trotting after his sleek
full-uddered dam, going all the gaits,
though he may be no more than a
week old, nipping grass daintily, or
nuZzling in the feed trough on the
ground, making a pretense of eating
grain the same as his mother 1t is
only a pretense until the saucy fellow
is a month old. He is foaled with teeth,
but does not for a while learn the use
of them.
Men are said to wear their souls in
the pineal gland. Horses, if they have
souls, no doubt locate them in the up
per lips. 1t is a wonderfully efficient
lip, soft as velvet to the touch and
sensitive to the least inequality. A
horse sweeps the manger with it al
most the instant he begins feeding,
and if it touches upon knots or Splin-
ters, keeps ware of them afterward.
Before wallowing even the dullest
horse puts down his head until the up
per lip touches the ground. and turns
slowly round and round, feeling thus
all the space upon which he means to
fling himself down and roll with all his
force. If he finds sharp stones, or
stubs, or sticks, he lifts his head and
goes in search of another place. The
lip also tells him when the ground is
mellow enough to make wallowing
supreme pleasure. Though horses wal
low in wet weather, sometimes coming
up coated with mud, they do it appar-
emily from sense of duty, with none
of the abandon they display, tossing
and tumbling upon light, sun-warm
earth. Often, indeed, they jump from
pasture into pillow land solely for
wallow exactly to their minds. The
wherefore of WallOWing is still a mys
terry. 1t belongs in the category of
involuntary motions, along with
stretching and yawning.
It strains credulity to hear how far a
horse will thrust his lip through an
opening to reach and bring in a COW
eted tit-bit. Thus he gets apples lying
just inside a fence, first paving hole
in the earth upon his side, then half
kneeling to reach under his substitute
for fingers. Thus, too. he brings to
mouth lush grass springing up beneath
the net of a dead brier clump. A
thrust of the lip also fips up a gate
latch, when he wishes to go through
as many thrusts, Earring up and down,
work loose the pin that fastens his
stall door
Draw bars he learns to take down
with his teeth, catching the bar fast
and shaking his head sideWise until
one end is jiggled from socket. Some
times. if experience has taught him
that a gate is weak in either latch Er
hinges, he runs violently against it.
bears it down. and is off. Horses in
herd have spells when jumping out or
in is a necessity. They may be full
fed, have shade and water, everything
indeed to satisfy reasonable animal.
not to say a well bred one, yet out they
go. Where there is a big range-that
is to say, wide cOmmons-they often
run for ten miles as hard as they can
leg it, then come trotting back in the
most innocent fashion to their own
proper quarters.
1t is not only blood horses that race
among themselves, free of girth or rein.
When a storm threatens horses of
every sort grow so full of running
that they must race and jump. Then
in wide pasture you may see sights
such as no course can offer. In every
herd there is a leader, usually a mare,
and oftener than not d barren one.