CAEE AND MANAGEMENT OF ANIMALS 769 



There is a look of ' fitness ' about a horse in condition 

 which is not easy to describe ; a bright active appearance, 

 an absence of fat, firmness of the muscles especially those 

 of the neck, a bloom on the coat, and generally an appear- 

 ance of a high degree of health. It is not possible to 

 maintain a horse in the highest form of condition for long, 

 but good sound hard general- utility condition is easily 

 maintained, and just as easily lost. A horse thrown out 

 of work for a week or fortnight has lost hard-working con- 

 dition, and this must be restored by exercise before he is 

 fit for the work he performed before being ' thrown up.' 



The danger of working horses out of condition, or of 

 giving them more work than their condition warrants, is 

 manifold. The most common general results are sprains 

 and laminitis ; but almost any form of lameness may have 

 its origin in want of fitness for work. 



The hygienic aspect of sprains is considerable, for it may 

 be broadly stated that no horse can suffer from a sprain 

 that either has not been worked until exhausted, or is unfit 

 for work through absence of condition. This is a most 

 important statement with far-reaching possibilities, for if 

 correct it is evident that the production of sprains is a 

 matter which is largely under control. The correctness of 

 the statement may be absolutely accepted ; sprains in horses 

 arise from want of condition and exhaustion. It is necessary 

 to combine these two causes, for though the horse out of 

 condition suffers from exhaustion, yet the horse in the 

 highest condition will also suffer from exhaustion if the 

 pace be too severe or the weight carried be too great. 



Horses do not sprain themselves in the stable, and in 

 this statement we refer to the common seat of sprain, viz., 

 flexor tendons and suspensory ligaments ; we exclude those 

 rarer forms of sprain, say of the ligaments of the hip, from 

 a bad slip in the stable. 



Sprains of the back tendons and suspensory ligaments 

 only occur when a horse gets tired ; it is the function of 

 the muscles of the limbs to propel and take the concussion 

 of the body, and this they are enabled to do by their con- 



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