192 THE PERFECT HORSE. 



this steady, persisted-in exercise touching any organ that 

 gives to it, in the end, its highest possible development. 

 Those who think that they can develop a horse's wind 

 in two or three months are greatly mistaken. Lungs, 

 like ships, are not built in a day : they cannot be put 

 into a horse a month before the expected race. They 

 must he grown up in the liorse^ beginning at the day 

 he is able to trot by the dam's side; and they can 

 only be grown in the manner I have pointed out. 



In conjunction with the exercise-lot, and alternating 

 with it, if convenient, comes jogging on the road or 

 around the track. Some people say, " Never drive nor 

 harness a colt before he is five years old." This is sheer 

 nonsense. The natural state is not the best state, neces- 

 sarily, to an animal so highly organized as the horse. 

 Dio Lewis will take a boy and train him, so that, at 

 twelve years of age, he will lift twice as much as any 

 Indian lad of that age who ever lived. For the pur- 

 poses of nature. Nature is perfect in her educational 

 processes ; but, for the purposes of man, man is the 

 better disciplinarian. A colt, if he be well formed and 

 of average size, should be driven from five to ten miles 

 to a light hitch-up twice a week at least, and be allowed 

 to " strip out " once or twice every drive for a quar- 

 ter of a mile, too, at that. Colts are made to go j and 

 going does not hurt them, as any one can see who 

 watches them in the pasture. It does not hurt a colt to 

 ^'^wjf " and ^^ siueat;^^ but, on the other hand, this swift 

 and hot lung-and-heart action is just what his system 



