936 VETEEINAEY HYGIENE 



appreciation of the element of personal responsibility, to an 

 improvident disposition, to an utter want of resourcefulness, 

 and to a dislike of the animal the result of its own stupid 



nature. 



In the training of officers for the mounted branches of 

 the Service, horse-mastership in its most practical and 

 comprehensive form must be imparted from the first. 

 They should be able to groom, make a bed, saddle, 

 harness, and perform all stable operations like an expert ; 

 without this they cannot teach what they do not know. 

 In the forge they should learn sufficient of shoeing to be 

 able to put a shoe on— information of much more value 

 than lectures or books on the subject. In the matter of 

 saddles and collars they should be able to recognise the 

 cause of most sore backs and sore shoulders at a glance, 

 and know exactly what alterations should be made to 

 enable the horse to work without further damage occurring ; 

 useful expedients to take the place of these alterations 

 they should be able to make with their own hands. Not a 

 single thing in the ordinary management of horses should 

 they be ignorant of, and they must be just as capable of 

 training them for military service as of riding them.* 



Supply of Horses. — Breeding horses specially for army 

 purposes is talked of lightly by those ignorant of the 

 subject. Anything more truly ridiculous cannot be con- 

 ceived — as if the army horse were a special type of no use 

 anywhere else ! But, even apart from that, and granting 

 for the sake of argument that he is a distinct type, how is 

 it possible to find in any army the high technical skill and 



* We quite recognise that horse-mastership in the fullest sense of the 

 term is only one part of the military education of the officer, which 

 year by year is being added to and made more exacting. It is just as 

 essential as his more purely military training, for without horse-master- 

 ship he may never have an opportunity of putting his military know- 

 ledge into practice. Further, he has plenty of time to learn it in ; he 

 is a long-service soldier, and it cannot be expected that a knowledge of 

 the arts and sciences which go to make up the profession of arms, can 

 be learned in less time than law or medicine, the groundwork of which 

 takes at least five years to lay down. 



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