BEDDING 49 



There is an old saying that a good city horse could 

 use up four sets of legs and feet. This means that a 

 large part of his bodily strength and endurance is 

 wasted because lameness and suffering wear out his 

 legs and feet long before his time. "His shoulders 

 is all gone savin' his legs," is the way in which one 

 stableman described the condition of a horse that had 

 worked all his muscles excessively in trying to ease the 

 strain on his battered legs and feet. 



Nothing will tend more to preserve legs and feet 

 than the habit of lying down. For many years the 

 Boston Work Horse Relief Association has conducted 

 a system of stable inspection with prizes for the best 

 kept stables, and among the stables entered for inspec- 

 tion a few years ago was one containing a fine lot 

 of horses well fed and well groomed. The only fault 

 the inspector could find with the stable was that the 

 horses were not bedded in the daytime on Sunday. 

 This fault was corrected, and four weeks later the 

 owner wrote to the Association : 



I am now convinced that horses should be bedded both day 

 and night when they are in the stable. My horses now lie down 

 a good deal through the day on Sundays, and my teamsters all 

 say that, as a result, they are better horses on Monday than 

 they used to be. 



The importance of a good bed is always insisted upon 

 by English experts in horseflesh, and one of the most 

 noted of them attributes the excellence of English 

 horses partly to the practice of liberal and skilful 

 bedding. '' A French groom," he says, " could never 

 bed a horse to the satisfaction of an English trainer." 



