out
of their heads. We have a fixed camp where we break them in. And a horse
may know his work perfectly well when there is no one about, but bring
him into the ring at night, and he is all abroad."

"Do you have to give them much whip?"

"Not much. If a horse doesn't know what you want him to do, it only
ruins him to whip him. But once he does a thing a few times, and then
won't do it, then you must whip him."

"What about trick horses?"

"A trick horse rolls a barrel, or lies down and goes to bed with the
clown, or fires a pistol--does any trick like that. Some small circuses
make the same horses do both trick and ring work, but it isn't a good
line. A horse is all the better to have only one line of business--same
as a man."

"How do you teach them tricks?"

"Oh, it takes a long time and a lot of hard work and great patience.
Even to make a horse lie down when he's ordered takes a couple of months
sometimes. To make a horse lie down, you strap up one leg, and then pull
his head round; after a while he gets so tired of the strained position
that he lies down, after which he learns to do it at command. If you
want him to pick up a handkerchief, you put a bit of carrot in it, and
after a while they know that you want them to pick it up--but it takes
a long time. Then a strange hand in the ring will flurry them, and if
anything goes wrong, they get all abroad. A good active pony, with a bit
of Arab blood in him, is the best for tricks."

"What's a school horse?"

"Ah, that's a line of business that isn't appreciated enough out here.
On the Continent they think a lot of them. A school horse is one that is
taught to do passaging, to change his feet at command, to move sideways
and backwards; in fact, to drill. Out here no one thinks much of it. But
in Germany, where everyone goes through military riding schools, they
do. The Germans are the best horse-trainers in the world; and the big
German circus-proprietors have men to do all their business for them,
while they just attend to the horses."

"How long does it take to turn out a school horse?"

"Well, Chiarini was the best trainer out here, and he used to take two
years to get a horse to his satisfaction. For school horses, you must
have thoroughbreds, because their appearance is half their success. We
had a New Zealand thoroughbred that had raced, and was turning out a
splendid school horse, and he got burnt after costing a year's training.
That's the luck o