398 HORSE P011TEAITUEE. 



The work has evidently been suited to their capacity, as 

 they come on to the track as gayly as a fashionable belle 

 makes her advent into a ball-room when she is satisfied 

 she is looking more than ordinarily well. Colts should 

 always manifest their pleasure at the prospect of the work 

 that is before them. Once get them so sore that every 

 movement is made with pain, and you have done more 

 injury than months of careful training will repair. There 

 is not the necessity for continued long work with them as 

 there is with older horses. Teach them to trot by giving 

 them short brushes, and never inflicting needless punish- 

 ment because they do not break as well as horses that 

 have been trotted for years, and they will repay you by 

 learning with more alacrity, than those that have been 

 drilled till the buoyant feelings of youth are lost. If they 

 trot fast enough to make it hard labor for them, they are 

 much easier to bring into the necessary condition than 

 horses that are matured. As I have heretofore remarked, 

 they have not so much inside fat, and do not require to be 

 " brought as low " as their elders. 



I have often noticed a tendency to overwork those 

 horses that are deficient in bottom working the length 

 into them, as the trainers say. Overwork a delicate horse, 

 and, my word for it, he will not recuperate in a long time. 

 Colts that are tolerably well bred do not suffer a great 

 deal of fatigue in trotting an ordinary race : therefore the 

 work should not be greater than is adequate to bring them 

 into proper form. We will suppose you have a three-year- 

 old colt that can trot fast for one of his age ; that he has 

 been in regular work for three months, and you expect to 

 trot him in races in a month from this time. We will also 

 imagine that he is a hearty feeder, and predisposed to 

 take on flesh without any curtailment of his work. This 

 would necessiate sweating. It is evident that the policy 

 would be wrong that would follow the same plan that is 



