Sequel to Horse Tradin’, an old favorite of mine. Can’t believe I let this one sit so long on my shelf unread. Amusing and interesting stories about horse and mule trading in Texas, just before automobiles started to replace them for ranch and farming work. The main character in the book (I’m assuming it was the author, I get the impression these stories are semi-autobiographical if not outright fact) is a young man but knows livestock well and uses his smarts to get the better of most horse deals and sales he makes, although sometimes the tables are turned on him. Which only makes the reader chuckle, because he well deserved it- considering how many people he knowingly sold half-broken or problem horses. It really is clever the way he masked or avoided mentioning these issues when making a sale. But you have to feel bad for the folks on the receiving end. On the other hand, the times he was able to change an animal’s behavior really interested me, for what it revealed about both equine intelligence and how the man used that knowledge.
Unfortunately in a lot of cases his remedies sounded harsh. One reviewer elsewhere expressed their opinion that this book is “mean-spirited” and I know what they’re getting at. Getting a horse to quit lying down in a stream and roll on him by shoving its head underwater until it chokes, or curing a horse of pulling back on a rope by suddenly cutting the line and letting it fall backwards off a steep bank into a river, are just two examples. There was also a story about a little girl with legs weakened from a long case of illness in bed- the doctor confided to Ben that he felt the parents had overdone it in their care for the girl, not letting her get up and use her legs to strengthen them again. Ben put a mare in a pasture backing up on the girl’s yard- this horse had foundered and couldn’t walk well. He encouraged the girl to hobble on her crutches alongside the horse leading it to water and such, mighty pleased with himself to see the girl grow stronger and the horse slowly improve as well. Then weeks later he decides it’s finally time to trim the horse’s badly overgrown hooves. I was a bit taken aback at that. Why didn’t he fix the mare’s feet far sooner? I’m not that knowledgable about the animals- maybe it’s a case where they had to recover to a certain point before they could be trimmed? but I got the impression he just didn’t bother to do it yet. Anyway, most of the stories are good fun and plenty interesting if you like reading about animal behavior and what things were like about a hundred years ago.
