them. Sure did [enjoy them]. And that’s the reason I miss them yet. I guess it’s five or six or seven years since I sold the last one. Ijust decided we’d go out and get clear of everything.

I give them all the grain they could eat and I give them, at night before I went to bed, a mess of scalded potatoes, hot bran mash or something; because my horse was out all hours of the night, you know, running the mail. That was the nice part of it. You take him in, he’d be steaming hot. You just had to put the straw to him then and dry him off. And I used to put straw under the rug to let a little air in, then put the rug on him. I always had a hot mess for him then.

I’ve seen lots of people coming home with wet horses, snow or rain, and chuck them in the barn... . No rubs or anything. I went into a place in Wood Islands that a horse was come off the mail. I went out to see the horse after they put him in the barn out there. They were eating their dinner. I happened to go out to the barn — my horse was tied out there — and the animal was just going like that [shivering] in the stall. I wouldn’t do that to a dog.

Boys, I seen that the animals was comfortable before I was comfortable, because I always had the tendency of liking horses, cattle and things. It was them before me... . No, I like for people to use them [right], supposing if

they were no good. Use them right.

There was just a farmer or a good neighbour — that was the only vet that was around then. If you had a sick horse or anything you’d go to your neighbour, call him up, and he’d come and do what he could. That would be in the teens.

Perhaps a colic, change of food or something you know. Perhaps put into the barn hot and getting a feed of something that they shouldn’t. He’d take a swell—up. He might have teeth getting bad, long tooth or something, couldn’t eat. Perhaps the heaves. Ah, there’s no cure for the heaves. I had them here with the heaves. We used to give them a big bottle of kerosene and baking soda. Go right after them, trade them. Harry Coulson’s medicine.

Blacksmith Shop

My father was a blacksmith. And Haywood MacLean was in Culloden; John Robert Ross, he was a blacksmith in Flat River; there was a MacLeod; a Docherty fellow up there in Iona; a couple of blacksmiths in Montague. I went to Montague lots of times to get horses shod after my father died. I never learnt the trade.

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