Country Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago. Canniff Haight
in the winter, to turn out and run by, and many such races I have had; but the moment a team turned out of the track to pass "Old Gray," he was off like a shot, and you might as well try to hold a locomotive with pins as him with an ordinary bit. He was skittish, and often ran away. On one occasion, when I was very young, he ran off with father and myself in a single waggon. We were both thrown out, and, our feet becoming entangled in the lines, we were dragged some distance. The wheel passed over my head, and cut it so that it bled freely, but the wound was not serious. My father was badly hurt. After a while we started for home, and before we reached it the old scamp got frightened at a log, and set off full tilt. Again, father was thrown out, and I tipped over on the bottom of the waggon. Fortunately, the shafts gave way, and let him loose, when he stopped. Father was carried home, and did not leave the house for a long time. I used to ride the self-willed beast to school in the winter, and had great sport, sometimes, by getting boys on behind me, and, when they were not thinking, I would touch "Old Gray" under the flank with my heel, which would make him spring as though he were shot, and off the boys would tumble in the snow. When I reached school I tied up the reins and let him go home. I do not think he ever had an equal for mischief, and for the last years we had him we could do nothing with him. He was perpetually getting into the fields of grain, and leading all the other cattle after him. We used to hobble him in all sorts of ways, but he would manage to push or rub down the fence at some weak point, and unless his nose was fastened down almost to the ground by a chain from his head to his hind leg, he would let down the bars, or open all the gates about the place. There was not a door about the barn but he would open, if he could get at the latch, and if the key was left in the granary door he would unlock that. If left standing he was sure to get his head-stall off, and we had to get a halter made specially for him. He finally became such a perpetual torment that we sold him, and we all had a good cry when the old horse went away. He was upwards of twenty-five years old at this time. How much longer he lived I cannot say. I never saw him afterward.
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