In the Stable, Field, and on the Road. 31 



less than four times each day, neither ought it to have 

 violent exercise directly after feeding. Indeed, it is a 

 safe maxim to always go the first and last mile of a 

 journey slow. The horse should always have water 

 before his food ; if you give it water after its food, it 

 being drunk rapidly, will carry the food through the 

 stomach in an undigested state and be likely to cause 

 obstruction of the bowels, the food not being deprived of 

 its acids, which would be carried into the blood to support 

 life. There are many stud-grooms who will neither water 

 nor feed their horse before going out for a day's hunting ; 

 others will give a little corn and no water, and think the 

 horse can go twelve or fourteen miles to cover, and 

 perhaps gallop thirty or forty miles in the course of the 

 day upon an empty stomach, when its entire digestive 

 system is so quick that the food is consumed in half-an- 

 hour. Then it has to work often from twelve to eighteen 

 hours without food or water. 



The grooms then wonder how the horse's digestive 

 system goes wrong. First it is smothered in a hot, un- 

 healthy, ill-ventilated stable ; then it is either burst with 

 food or starved. Sometimes the blame does not lie at the 

 door of the groom, but with the master, who thinks he 

 knows all about horses, because he buys them, and will 

 not allow a groom to use his own discretion, and is after- 

 wards grieved to find that his horses are unable to carry 

 him through a hard run. That a horse can run well after 

 being well fed has often been proved. "When a boy, a 

 friend of mine, a stud-groom now in Leicestershire, went 

 to Ireland for Punchestown races with a horse called 

 Oakstick. The night before the race the lad had to sleep 



