120 STRAW BEDS FOR HORSES 



of their medicine, they will begin to take such 

 gallops as will sufficiently forward them to com- 

 mence their first slow gentle sweats; and those 

 that may have to sweat often may have got over 

 two or three of them on the downs by the 10th 

 or 15th of February, by which time we will say 

 a frost sets in; this then obliges us to have im- 

 mediate recourse to the straw bed in the pad- 

 dock, for the time the frost may last. The horses 

 on the present occasion have been got ready in 

 the morning much as usual, the only little dif- 

 ference to be attended to is in the clothing and 

 booting of them. With regard to the former, 

 they must all be warmly and comfortably clothed 

 for walking or galloping exercise ; and the adding 

 or diminishing of the quantity of their clothes on 

 sweating days must depend, as has already 

 been mentioned, on the ages and constitutions 

 of each of them; for it is by exercise being pro- 

 perly administered, and particularly as regards 

 sweating them, that they are kept right as to 

 flesh during the severity of the frosty weather. 



Let us suppose that our horses have been got 

 ready in the morning, that is to say, have been 

 fed and dressed, and their body clothes and sad- 

 dles put on ; the boys go out of the stables, the 



