" SATAN FINDS SOME MISCHIEF STILL." 67 



of work he may get in the field, and the great difference in the 

 amount of work that different liorses will require. He should 

 always be left free in a loose box, and there he will take all the 

 exercise he needs on the first day after a severe run. 



131. — The ordinary ridinji' or li^lit horse when not daily 

 worked most often suH'ers for want of exercise. 



AVe once heard a worthy citizen say, " My horse on^'ht to 

 take me there and back (40 miles) well in a day, as he never goes 

 out of the stable all the rest of the week." Many persons seem 

 entirely unaware that animal strength must be used, or lost, and 

 cannot be bottled up six days a week for use on the seventh. 

 The animal machine will fit itself for anything reasonable that 

 is regularly demanded of it. The muscles will harden and 

 enlarge, the arteries will expand, and the blood itself will become 

 fit for hard work (109), if regularly demanded of it ; but if a 

 horse is shut up in a stable three days out of four, he soon 

 becomes unfit for hard work, and if he does it at all, only 

 does it with great danger and suffering to himself. Such 

 a horse is dangerously eager for a gambol or a scamper when he 

 first gets out of his prison, bat soon finds that his softened and 

 wasted muscles, his thickened pipes and poor blood, all fail him 

 in any protracted exertion, especially if he be loaded with fat. 



132. — There are few horses that are not quiet with regular 

 work, there are very few horses that are really (juiet without it. 

 The strong impulse to take exercise which nature lias implanted 

 in all young healthy horses, almost compels them t j play, and 

 horse-play is generally dangerous, and often leads to the horse 

 learning something, or getting into some mess, that makes him 

 dangerous ever afterwards. Thousands of timid persons who 

 would be immensely benefitted by riding on horseback or driving 

 themselves about, are prevented from doing so because they are 

 frightened with horses too fresh and too playful to be safe. We 

 have known such persons afraid to ride or drive their own good 

 tempered but playful horses go to a livery stable and hire horses 

 that had been sold cheap to the stable keeper for real vice, but 

 which were kept safe and sober by the excessively hard work of 

 their wretched lives. No cruel overwork is necessary with the 



