THE HORSE: ITS KEEP AND MANAGEMENT. 53 



every twenty, especially carriage horses and such like, will 

 paw and rake the straw from underneath them with their 

 fore feet, and where this is the case their knees have to go 

 on the bare bricks, or hard floor. When they go to rise, 

 they spread their fore feet right out from under them, and 

 many of them jump up quickly, and cannot get foothold. 

 It is not a matter of ricking themselves in their fore feet so 

 much as in their hinder parts, especially the round bone, 

 although occasionally they do rick their shoulders. 



The owners, no doubt, think they are doing the 

 animals a kindness when they have the stable floor well 

 washed down. To my mind it is a great mistake to wash 

 where the horse stands ; if it must be done, it is best to 

 cover it up with either chaff, fine sand, moss peat, or even 

 dry earth put down would be better than leaving it bare. 

 Of course where there are drains in stables, to carry the 

 urine away, they must be washed down and cleaned 

 occasionally, if not, the stable smells very badly. 



Many gentlemen are very much against using short 

 straw for bedding horses down in the stable. When buying 

 they will have the long fine wheat straw. This, I think, is a 

 great mistake, the longer it is the worse it is for the horses' 

 knees. I will explain why this is so. Before horses 

 lie down, as I have said before, in seventeen cases out of 

 every twenty they paw with the front feet on the ground, 

 and pull the straw back from underneath them. It not 

 only makes them slip when they go to get up, but their 

 knees come into contact with the hard floor, so much so that 

 horses often knock the hair off the knees when in the 



