FIRST-HAND BITS OF STABLE LORE 



the stable ; he may prefer solitude, being of mis- 

 anthropic temperament ; he may be a " night- 

 feeder," or prefer to steal his grain, finding a few 

 handfuls here and there in the straw of his box ; 

 he may have a thousand fancies, but if he is to 

 prove a good horse they must be divined and 

 provided for. These little things make all the 

 difference. If walking, galloping, scraping, and 

 schooling were the essentials, training would be 

 too easy. When asked how he trained his won- 

 derfully successful string, the very excellent hand- 

 ler laconically replied, " In the stable ; " and that 

 is about four-fifths of the whole business. 



There are many high-strung horses which fear 

 the crowd of a race-track, and fret away to noth- 

 ing during the twenty minutes or so they are in 

 the paddock. They will outgrow it if taken to 

 that enclosure every day, and kept walking there 

 for an hour or so. They fear, not the people, but 

 the race which has always proved an accompani- 

 ment, and their dread disappears with familiarity. 

 Such horses ought to be stabled away from the 

 track, and will rarely bear, undisturbed, any pre- 

 liminaries in the way of " setting short " before a 

 race, but are best left to run without preliminary 

 " readying." 



194 



