COLLARS AND SADDLES. 305 



never be as capable of enduring friction, or be as useful for any 

 purpose as it would have been if hardened and thickened by 

 patient reasonable means. Thus we see that here hurry is a 

 great loss of time, and produces results as tedious as they are 

 ultimately unsatisfiictory. If you carelessly or stupidly allow a 

 horse's skin to be seriously damaged, you have certainly lost a lot 

 of time and have made it impossible to get his skin either so 

 quickly or thoroughly fit for work as with more care and 

 patience you might easily have done. 



760. — See that saddles and collars fit, so that the pressure 

 and friction will be equally divided over a sufficient amount of 

 surface, and let the lining material be soft, free from lumps, 

 seams, or grit of any description. A collar must never be too 

 large, or the friction will be greatl)' increased. A saddle is best 

 quite large enough, and although it should be as light as possible, 

 the iron work in it must be strong enough to maintain its right 

 form. 



761. — But whatever care you take no two saddles or collars 

 will press on exactly the same parts, so that the horse that has 

 been hardened to his own saddle or collar will often gall directly 

 when worked in a different one, even though it may fit him just as 

 well as his own. Never start on a long important journey with any 

 new gear that your horse's skin has not been slowly and carefully 

 hardened to. Just as no sensible man would start for a Ions: 

 walk in a new pair of boots, however well they might fit him. 



762. — The great thing is to watch the first symptom of 

 tenderness, and never let it go on to soreness, far less to a broken 

 skin. For a saddle, packing of some kind can always be got 

 even on a journey, even though you take off your stockings and 

 fill them with soft grass to shift the weight from a suffering part. 

 A blanket or sheep skin can generally be obtained. With a 

 collar there are many ways of putting the pressure higher or 

 lower ; or if serious mischief has been done, a blanket or sheep 

 skin, a shirt, or even a sack can be made to do duty as a breast 

 strap. 



763. — In those long journeys, where the horse starts full of 

 flesh and arrives at its close a bag of bones, neither saddles nor 

 u 



