PREPARATION FOR WORK 297 



are often required to do more, perhaps, than any other variety of the horse, 

 and in the grass countries are made as fit as if they were going to run in a 

 steeplechase, yet they are brought to covert looking big and full of muscle, 

 without any pretensions to be considered as drawn fine. Still the sweat, 

 either in clothes or without them, must be occasionally carried out, or the 

 internal organs will continue loaded with fat, as is natural to them when 

 they have been for some time in a state of rest, coupled with high feeding. 

 The use and amount of sweaters must be proportioned to the constitutional 

 peculiarities of the individual ; in one horse a slow gallop will produce a 

 perfect lather on the skin, while in another treated in all respects in the 

 same way, there shall be hardly a hair turned. So also the effect of 

 apparently the same degree of sweating on different horses is very variable, 

 producing a great relief in one case, and scarcely any in another. The 

 groom must not attempt to carry out any fixed rule, but must watch the 

 effect of each day's work, and increase or diminish the amount next day 

 according to circumstances. As I before remarked, a sweat may be with 

 clothes or without, the object in each case being not so much to do a certain 

 amount of work, but to get rid of a fixed quantity of superfluous fat and 

 humours. On the other hand, a gallop has quite the opposite end in view, 

 being intended to brace the muscles, heart, blood-vessels, and lungs, by 

 stimulating them to act in an extraordinary degree, but without any view 

 to reduce the weight of the body or any part of it. In a sweat, therefore, 

 the pace is slow and long continued ; no exertion is made to render it smart, 

 or to develop action in any shape, the whole attention of the groom being 

 devoted to the single object which is connected with the removal of fat. 

 It is usual, therefore, to send the horse along at a slow, steady, hand gallop 

 for four miles, or in very gross animals for five or six, the last half-mile 

 only being done at anything like a fast pace, and even then the horse 

 should not be extended to the utmost, on account of the great extra weight 

 he has to carry, if he has two or three sweating blankets on. It is quite 

 necessary to bear in mind this special object of the sweat, as the Turkish 

 bath is in some establishments still used, and for a time was in great favour. 

 The opponents of the Turkish bath contend that it can never supersede the 

 old plan, because, though it will get rid of superfluities, it will not develop 

 muscle ; but they forget that it is not used for the latter purpose, but is 

 solely confined to the one object, which by the employment of sweating 

 blankets out-of-doors is accompanied with considerable risk. The Turkish 

 bath is, in fact, a means to one end only, and must not be employed for any 

 other. No horse could have his muscles and heart, his wind and limbs, 

 made more wiry and enduring than before by any number of baths ; but he 

 may be put into a condition which shall fit him for being so, without the 

 risk to the legs and feet which a number of sweats in heavy clothing 

 will always cause. No wonder, therefore, that trainers eagerly resort to 

 the use of the bath, especially as every year their horses seem to be getting 

 more and more liable to break down. It is quite true that the old-fashioned 

 sweat combines muscular exercise with the process of unloading the system, 

 but in so doing, the time of the groom is the only thing saved, and no one 

 would take that into the calculation, as being worthy of consideration. By 

 the use of the bath when he is too gross, the horse is sweated on one day, 

 and on the next he may be gallooed if necessary, the bath producing so 



