SHYING 73 



blood. The trouble is not one that cold-blooded 

 horses are liable to. 



This vice is of so peculiar a nature and so many 

 horses are never cured of it — at least during the 

 best years of their lives — that its cure might seem, 

 at first blush, a difficult matter. But, once under- 

 stood, there is no trouble in effecting a cure and 

 the treatment is extremely simple, consisting only 

 in judicious feeding accompanied by work — work, 

 the natural and God-appointed medicine that has 

 reformed more vices and taken the nonsense out 

 of more horses and men and women than any 

 other agency since the world began. I do not 

 mean excessive or unduly hard labor, such as 

 breaks the spirit of a horse, nor occasional severe 

 journeys, followed by a period of rest, but daily, 

 unremitting work in harness or saddle or even 

 light farm work, such as plowing old ground, if 

 the horse is large and strong enough. 



That the reasonableness of this treatment may 

 be fully understood, let us look, for a moment, at 

 the nervous system of the highly-bred horse and 

 the purpose it serves. This nervous system — far 

 more highly developed than in the cart-horse — is 

 what gives him his reserve force, his staying 

 power. It is not bone and sinew that keeps him 

 going at the end of a hard race, but nervous 

 energy. The common horse gets tired and quits ; 



