If Horses Could Scream
By Humane Press Bureau
THERE are still people in the world who regard the horse as a dumb animated machine, created solely for the use of men and women, and having no rights of his own. That is largely because the horse is in the fullest sense a dumb animal. If you strike a dog, he yelps; if you step on the tail of a cat, she screams. A horse, on the other hand, may be beaten almost to death and make no sound. Pleasure he expresses by whinnying; but it is only in his death agony that his suffering finds audible expression, and frequently not even then. It is this pathetic silence, this inability of the horse to give utterance to his pain, that causes so many persons to ignore his sufferings. They have no imagination, and he has no cries with which to impress their indurated senses. If he could cry out as the dog does, our city streets would reecho sounds that could not be borne a day. The change in the treatment of horses would be instant and enduring. Take, for example, navicular disease, of which many horses suffer. It attacks one of the bones of the fore foot. The bone decays just as a human tooth decays. Imagine the suffering of a horse obliged to walk on a foot in that condition. Some forms of spavin are so painful that horses afflicted with them become thin, even if they are generously fed and do no work. The troubles may, indeed, be recognized by this peculiar emaciation — an excessive thinness about the waist or loins. But altho the horse does not speak nor cry out, he tells his story plainly enough to those who can understand it. It is his eye that speaks. When he suffers, his eye is contracted, and has a nervous, flurried, restless expression, indescribable, yet easily recognized. When he is comfortable, his eye seems large and full and has a quiet and serene look, the expression of fun and mischief. From a stableful of city work horses, an expert will select by the expression of their eyes alone the horses that have good drivers and those that have cruel ones. That the ears of the horse also express his emotion is too well known to need more than a reference. When he is unhappy, ill-treated, or neglected, his ears have a backward slant that is characteristic. You sometimes see it in animals that are vicious; you always see it in those that are abused. Since the horse's vocabulary is so limited, owners and drivers can learn it all. — Humane Press Bureau.