TRIMMING. 463 



regular and daily exercise keep pliant, become stiff and rigid by continued 

 absence of motion. Any exertion under such circumstances is attended with 

 pain ; and if an old horse is still in a state of work without pain to himself, 

 the only way to enable him to do so is to keep him going. Young horses, 

 on the contrary, require a considerable length of comparative rest to recover 

 from unusual exertion. They have not been long enough accustomed to it 

 for habit to have familiarized its effects either to the limbs, muscles or con- 

 stitution, all of which suffer considerable temporary prostration by it, how- 

 ever little youthful spirits may make them show it. The old horse is so 

 accustomed to exertion that in him its chief effect is in creating stiffness, 

 which proper exercise carries off." Charles Brindley, "The Hunting Field" 

 p. 61 et seq. 



TRIMMING. 



Every well kept horse requires " trimming up " from time 

 to time. Some persons consider that, with the horse, beauty 

 " unadorn'd, adorn'd the most," which in some cases is true, 

 as is instanced in the trotter, but as soon as man submits 

 the horse to any refinements, they should be carried to 

 a full state of development. The outlines of a horse should 

 never be allowed to be broken by the presence of long hairs, 

 such as appear on the fetlock joints, edges of the ears and 

 around the jowl and muzzle. 



The hairs on the fetlock joint should be cut moderately 

 short with a pair of scissors and then trimmed up with a 

 hand clipper, after which the hair over the tendons just above 

 should be thinned out by the fingers and not by the clipper, 

 in order to prevent a line of short bristles from showing 

 where the work ends. By combining the use of the clippers 

 with hand pulling of the long hairs, the object of the trim- 

 ming may be obtained with a perfectly smooth natural 

 appearance. The work when done in this way is much 

 more satisfactory than when done with a singeing lamp. 



