HOW TO TRAIN A COLT. 193 



needs for its development. I would not say a word to 

 encourage any to overdrive colts ; for I hold that such 

 conduct is criminal : but I believe, that, where one colt 

 is crippled by over-exercise, fifty in the country are 

 being crippled by constrained idleness. Give your 

 colt, friend, plenty of oats and hay and pure water, 

 and fresh air in his stall, and plenty of exercise in the 

 exercise-lot and on the road, and you will have an ani- 

 mal, when he is matured, able to go fast and go far, and 

 pull weight, without giving out, either: and if you 

 should ever enter him in competition with another 

 horse of equal speed by nature, but educated in the 

 old approved style of being babied in a box-stall until 

 he was put into actual training, you will see your horse 

 trotting under the wire with ears pricked, and unlabored 

 action ; while your rival's nag is straining and blow- 

 ing, in vain but frantic effort, half way down the stretch 

 toward the distance-post. Whatever else you neglect 

 in the education and training of your colt, reader, do 

 not neglect the development of his lungs. No matter 

 what theory of development you adopt : have a theory ; 

 for this implies thought on your part touching the mat- 

 ter ; and the trouble now is, very likely, that you have 

 never given any thought to it at all. 



Next to the development of lung-power, stands, as I 

 judge, in importance, the development of muscular 

 power ; and to this we will now turn our attention. 



The muscles which need especial development are 

 those of the haunches, or thighs, and hach. The former 



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