CHAPTER V. 

 CLEANING HORSES. 



How Horses are sometimes cleaned— How they should be cleaned 

 —Attention in wet weather. 



IV /r ANY people who go in for keeping a horse, or horses, 

 ■^^-^ have different ideas as to how the animal's coat 

 should be cleaned, and kept in good trim. It is a well- 

 known fact that numbers of grooms spend close on an 

 hour in grooming a horse. One thing struck me in my 

 younger days, and I often wondered at it. The farmers' 

 horses frequently had better coats during the Summer 

 than gentlemen's horses which had six times the amount 

 of labour bestowed upon them. The attendant who saw 

 to the farmers' horses would have from six to ten horses all 

 cleaned and ready for work by six o'clock in the morning, 

 and yet most of the animals' coats would look like a piece 

 of silk. 



I have noticed many people, when cleaning horses, 

 using a curry comb, and giving the coat a good rake all over, 

 when doing this they often work the hair the wrong way. 

 That is to say, instead of currying the way the hair lies, 

 they scratch the opposite way. If these people are 

 asked why they do it, they tell you it is because it gets the 



