The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-11-28
TIE TREATMENT OF HORSES
THE WoRSF0RUELTFTo HORSES
 CHARGED
no the vanity of Fashionable wO-

The Rev. Dr. SaYage's recent sermon on Our Poor Relations, the Animals appeals to me as a horseman, but as such can give him some information.
 He spoke of .'men as guilty of vani- ty in that they use overhead checks, put in their horses mouths bits that torment so they will appear alive and restless, and dock their horses to make a fine display in the street. Now, in by far the majority of such cases it is not men, but Fashionable" women who cause all such torture, abuse and mutilation. These same women will cause the arrest of poor pedler who is trying to earn an existence, for work ing worn out, broken down horse that is a cast-off from some fashiona- ble stable originally because its leg gave way under the strain of the two pounds weight of shoes and pads used to make it step high;" yet at the very same time that they cause the arrest they are using horses in their car riages that in two, three or four years will eventually be in the same broken down state, from the same cause, as the poor horse that the pedler drives.
 It is the rivalry between the fashion able women that is the cause of all the torturing bits and rigging used to make horses step high and fret. The men, who have to pay for the horses, would. from financial reasons if not from humanity. prefer having their horses go in manner that would make them last longer.
 Of course there are specimens of the numskull of the male gender that would have an eye punched out or an ear cut off their horses if fashion so decreed; but these apologies for men are easily distinguished from the real horseman on account of the absurd and useless appliances they use on their horses under the impression that they are improving the appearance of them.
 The custom of docking is carried to such an extreme that the original cause. of 1t is entirely lost sight of; and in spite of state law against it, dock ing is done and by the orders of the very best people in so called society. As far as the operation itself is con- cerned, as practised to-day 1t is little if any more painful than the extrac- tion of tooth by an expert; but, as Dr. Savage wisely remarks, it is after ward, when the horse drops to the ranks of the express wagon and ped- ler's cart, that the misery comes in. If docking were done in a moderate way, leaving a long stump instead of an eight or nine inch one, the tail (hair) could be allowed to grow out again and the horse would have some use of 1t for protection against flies.
 No better place than the great fash ionable horse show can be selected to prove that the torturing of society horses is due to fashionable women and not men. The classes for horses used exclusively for men, the road, sters, are all long tailed horses, and se- were or tight checking and heavy weight shoeing (to make them step higlD counts against them in judging. coaches, where style does not count so much as ability or usefulness, severe bits and checking are not so prominent as in the four-inhand classes for park use, the latter really exclusively for the purpose of exhibiting fashionable women in competition with their rivals. Outside the Garden waiting for the members of the 'gnetler sex" can be seen dozens Of horses gagged up with tight check reins and standing in mis- cry. As each carriage in turn swings up to the entrance to receive its human freight, the coachman is expected to give an extra twiteh to the reins to make the horses pull up smart" and stand restless, and if the first prize winners in the brougham class happen to be horses that naturally carry their heads high the chances are that John, the coachman, is instructed to pull up those horses heads 9 couple of inches the next time the carriage is ordered out. The fact that the prize winners have long, arching necks and naturally carry their heads high, while the out side carriage pair have short stiff necks and would naturally carry their heads