GENERAL PREPARATION FOR WORK. 295 



they have been seasoned. In the cold rainy months, many 

 are destroyed ; and many more endangered by injudicious 

 exposure. Wet weather is the most pernicious, yet it is not 

 the rain alone that does the mischief. If the horse be kept 

 in motion, and afterward perfectly and quickly dried, or be 

 kept in motion till dry, he suffers no injury. His coat may 

 be bleached till it is like a dead fur ; but the horse does not 

 catch cold. If allowed to stand at rest with his coat drenched 

 in rain, the surface of the body rapidly loses its heat. There 

 is no stimulus to the formation of heat ; the blood circulates 

 slowly, accumulates internally, and oppresses vital organs, 

 especially the lungs. The legs become excessively cold and 

 benumbed ; the horse can hardly use them, and, when put in 

 motion, he strikes one against another. Exposure, when it 

 deprives the body of heat in this way, is a fertile source of 

 inflamed lungs, of thoracic influenza, catarrh, and founder. 

 When the skin is wet, or the air very cold, the horse should, 

 if possible, be kept in motion, which will preserve him, how- 

 ever little he may have been accustomed to exposure. 



Horses that have been kept in warm stables, and never out 

 but in genial weather, are in most danger. If they can not 

 be kept in constant motion, they must be prepared before they 

 are exposed. If they commence work in summer or early 

 in autumn, they will be fully inured to the weather before the 

 worst part of winter arrives. But if they commence at 

 this trying period, they should be out only one or two hours 

 at a time : on good days they may be longer. No precise 

 rule can be given. The length of time for which a horse 

 may be exposed without danger, varies with his condition, 

 the weather, and the work. It should shorten with the wet- 

 ness or coldness of the weather, and the tenderness of the 

 horse. If he must run rapidly from one place to another, and 

 wait perhaps half an hour at each, he is in more danger than 

 if the pace were slower, and the time of waiting shorter ; and 

 if moved about constantly, or every ten minutes, he suffers 

 less injury than if he were standing still. After a time the 

 horse is inured to exposure, and may be safely trusted in the 

 severest weather. 



Repeated and continued application of cold to the surface 

 of the body stimulates the skin to produce an extra supply of 

 heat. The exposure of two or three days is not sufficient to 

 rouse the skin to this effort. It is always throwing off a 

 large quantity of heat; but it is several days, with many 

 horses it is several weeks before the skin can assume activi- 



