60 HORSES: 



How to put him in shape to make seventy-five miles 

 in a day at a favoring pace, say in twelve hours, or 

 forty in five hours, and without taxing him more 

 heavily than in the case first supposed — that is the 

 question. Of course, there are many horses that 

 could not be brought up to this point, but it would 

 be easily within the limits of any natural roadster. So 

 far as condition relates to vigorous health and longev- 

 ity, the limit would be better fixed at a somewhat 

 lower figure perhaps, providing always that the diet 

 ■"were correspondingly restricted ; for it is certain that 

 the horse that is fueled up, so to say, for two hun- 

 dred miles a week, had better make that number 

 than anything under it. Without a waste of words, 

 I will say that the principle consists in gradually in- 

 creasing the work up to say twenty-five to fifty miles 

 a day, averaging thirty-five perhaps, and at a good 

 average road-gait. The point is that a road-horse 

 may accomplish on any given day, if he is kept in 

 condition, two to five times his daily average — de- 

 pending, of course, upon what his average is.* He 

 may approach this for two days in succession, even, 

 if naturally a powerful animal, and without overtax- 

 ing him ; providing this is followed by ample rest- 

 say an entire day in a box-stall, or a little walk- 

 round on the " off day." In this I am not consider- 



* It is evident that while a horse that averages ten miles a day 

 might be driven five times that distance upon occasion, the one 

 making thirty-five or forty would be limited to say eighty miles, 

 or about twice his average ; the degree of exhaustion in the two 

 cases being, we will suppose, about equal. 



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