Balking horse

One time my father decided to redo the kitchen porch. He tore the wood out from the old porch. He needed to excavate a good bit of dirt in order to build a new porch. He hooked a mare and a mule to a wagon. He backed the wagon into a spot where he could shovel the dirt from underneath the old porch into the wagon. He had built sideboards on the wagons would could hold a lot of dirt. The ground where the wagon was sitting was soft and the weight of the dirt in the wagon cause the wheels of the wagon to dig deep into the ground. When he started to move the wagon with horses the mare balked. The mule was straining to pull the wagon forward but the mare was holding back so that made him you need to pull not only the wagon of dirt but the mare who was pulling backwards.

This was the first and only time in my life that I heard my dad swear. He was a very angry man at that moment he grabbed one of the timbers that was holding the sideboards on and jerked it out of its position and struck the mare on the rump as hard as he could. When this timber which was a 4 x 4 came down on the back of the mare she lunged forward with enough force that the wagon started moving forward. That was the end of her balking. And this was the first and only time I ever saw an animal balk.