Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1902-03-13
DOCKING HORSES.
Outrageous Custom Denounced in
Proper Fashion.

| PROPER r aShlon.
The letter of your Virginia cor
respondent on horsetail docking, says
writer in the Baltimore sun, de
serves more than a passing notice for
the reason it is a specious plea offered
in justification OF an abominable and
cruel practical fashionable fad. The
correspondent defense of this special
cruelty is on a par with the excuse
offered for clipping horses of their
hair-that the horses belonging to The
rich are well fed and we'll groomed,
hence do not feel the necessity of the
| coat that nature has provided chem
with for their protection against the
chill blasts of winter. The poor mans
hoFse-that's another thing.
Happily our sportsmen are not now
engaged in bull-baiting, bear-baiting,
badger drawing and the cruel sports
of our grandfathers. The cruelty of
years ago was thought just as neces-
sary at that time for the enjoyment of
life as are tail-docking, clipping and
other cruel fads now. Enlightened
public opinion has stamped out the
brutalities of other days, and when
public opinion is educated up to the
unnecessary misery inflicted on the
horse that special brutality will go
and with it the spur OF the gallant
trooper, the hook EN- snivey, out-all-
night knight whose business is punch
ing holes through rings and spur lac
Grating his horses sides, hunting
foxes and aniseed bags trail, of which
foX-hunting a writer in the Westmin-
ster Review says: ut could not be
more fiagrantly and miserably un-
manly and unwomanly for a crowd of
men and women to sally forth in per-
feet security themselves, armed and
mounted with every advantage, power
and skill on their side, to do to death
with dogs some poor, skulking, terri
fed little habitant Of woodsidc or
hedgerow-a thing so utterly despic-
bale, so ludicrous and palpably mean"
Ouida, the novelist, in the Nineteenth
Century Magazine, asks this question,
Then how odious to the horse must
be the forcing of the bit into his mouth
and the headstall over his ears, with
out speaking of the fortunes OF the
spur, singing of the lash, the dread
full weight upon the spine from which
the riding horse suffers, and the dread
full strain upon the loins and withers to
which the driving horse is unneces-
sarily condemned, the high check rein
to pull the horses head into position OF
torture, and ask yourself if in common
pity and justice that life should not be
aIleviated and lightened as is possible
to make it,"
This description taken from the
same writer will more than fit those
who admire dock-tailed horses and
practice that brutality: He likes
animals. Oh! dear me, yes-poor
creatures. Why not?-but it does not
disturb him that the horse in the
hanson cab which he has called to
take him to the city has weals all over
his loins and bit that fills his mouth
with blood and foam; writes his agent
| to have the young cattle dishorned and
| buys as present for his daughter a
card case made from shell of tor
toise which was roasted alive. turned
on it's back on the fire to give rudy
glow to it's she'll"
The vicious horse is made so by
cruel treatment; docking the horses
tail is the refinement of the cruelty
only surpassed by denuding the horse
of his hairy robe and sending him out
| t0 oh; in hn n int
The legislature owes it to this com
munity to protect it from the senseless
fads of the stock farm and should,
without delay, pass the bill offered by
the Society for the Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals against docking
horses tails, amended to read All
cruelty, docking or mutilating, shaw
ing or clipping hair, reaching names,
etc.