Training Racehorses. 53 



he does ? ' Takes a drink, if he can get it,' you naturally 

 reply. ' And after he has had his whisky and soda, glass 

 of beer or shandy-gaff, cup of tea, or glass of water, what 

 does he say ? ' * By Jove ! that has done me a power of 

 good/ or words to that effect, you answer. Right again, my 

 reader, and so would your horse say, under similar circum- 

 stances, were he able to speak. But I fancy I hear you observe 

 that even horses have been known to drop dead from taking 

 a drink when they were hot. Such instances, I admit, have 

 undoubtedly occurred ; but only when the imbibed fluid was 

 comparatively cold, in which cases it caused death by nervous 

 shock. The precaution of slightly warming the water, or of 

 giving it only in small and repeated quantities, is not difficult 

 to adopt. In a field artillery battery to which I belonged, 

 it was the custom to water the horses after they were fed. 

 Our farrier-major, luckily, had provided himself with the 

 recipe of Professor Dick's admirable anti-spasmodic drench 

 (an ounce of laudanum, an ounce-and-a-half of turpentine, 

 and a pint of linseed oil), and accordingly made himself 

 locally famous for his ability to cure colic ! I need hardly 

 say that the best practice in giving water to horses is to 

 allow them a constant supply in their stalls. If that cannot 

 conveniently be done, they should be watered each time 

 before being fed. 



Much of the routine work of training is carried on in 

 such an unavoidably mechanical manner, that trainers are 

 apt to accept facts without analysing the causes of the results. 

 In most cases, whether in England or abroad, race horses in 

 training get their gallops at such a distance from their stables, 

 that they have the opportunity of becoming cooled down, 

 during their walk home, which, if we come to reflect on it, is 

 a potent means of keeping them in health. This fact was 

 often prominently brought to my mind in India during stage 

 journeys, on which the carriages, either light four-wheelers 

 or tongas (a kind of curricle) are drawn by ponies. The 

 intelligent native horse-owners, recognising the immense 



