willing horse

plural willing horses

1. datedidiomaticOne who readily performs hard work or who voluntarily tolerates an adverse situation.

   "When he hears of it he'll be more anxious than ever to fight." / Valencia nodded. "A spur to a willing horse."

   1914, William MacLeod Raine, chapter 10, in A Daughter of the Dons

   4 more examples

   [A]fter a good deal of discussion (some of it angry) among the Major-Generals, it was settled as such things are everywhere—the willing horse (which SHERMAN always is) getting the work to do.

   1863 November 10, “Gen. Sherman's Column”, in New York Times, retrieved 12 Feb 2014

   [S]he said to me as quietly as a maiden might ask one to carry a glove, "Jan Ridd, carr thic^([sic]) thing for me." So I carried it for her, without any words; wondering what she was up to next, and whether she had ever heard of being too hard on the willing horse.

   1869, R[ichard] D[oddridge] Blackmore, “FEEDING OF THE PIGS”, in Lorna Doone: A Romance of Exmoor. […], volume II, London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC, pages 57–58

   Finding us easy in our ways, he […] told me a cock-and-bull story with the moral of another five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd; but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner, and kept him in his place as an inferior with freezing British dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far, and killed a willing horse; his face fell; I am sure he would have refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext.

   1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Down the Oise: To Moy”, in An Inland Voyage, London: C[harles] Kegan Paul & Co., […], →OCLC, page 141

   There is certainly the need to reward performance and offer incentives for success, but flogging a willing horse is not the way to do it.

   1999 February 18, Philip D. Delnon, “Education letter: Exhausted, underpaid: and that's a good day”, in The Independent, London, retrieved 12 Feb 2014