944 VETEEINAEY HYGIENE 



Military Training .—The peace life of a soldier's horse 

 consists of riding school, drills, field-days, and occasional 

 show parades. Of these there is nothing which more 

 solidly lays the foundation of future trouble than the riding 

 school. The recruit horse on joining had until recently* 

 many months of this weary monotony in front of him, within 

 the four walls of a roofed building, badly lighted, badly 

 ventilated, where he saw nothing of the common sights of 

 the road or field, and where he was taught to be an auto- 

 maton. The influence of the old High School of Horse- 

 manship of the 17th century still hangs to us, and horses 

 are made to place themselves in unnatural attitudes, walk 

 sideways like crabs, cross their legs, bend the neck and 

 spine into a position never naturally assumed, and all this 

 under the impression that the joints are being suppled and 

 the horse made handy. 



He is taught to move with chronometrical precision in a 

 circle, the diameter of which is little more than the length 

 of his own body ; he is trained on the word of command 

 to turn sharply at right angles to the path in which he 

 is travelling, a movement absolutely unnatural in a four 

 legged animal, and only possible with a biped. In the 

 riding school he makes at the least four turns at right 

 angles in every 130 yards, and is not allowed to round 

 off corners but must take them squarely ; the object of this 

 being to make him ' handy ' on parade and obedient to 

 the rein and leg. 



The effects of the above are to wear out the joints and lay 

 the foundation of future unsoundness. 



The essentials in the training of a military horse 

 are : — 



1. He must be used to strange sights, sounds, noises, 

 cheering, music, guns, masses of men. These can never 

 be learned in a Eiding School. 



2. He must learn to go by himself anywhere at any 



* In 1904 the first attempt to train iiorses on rational lines was 

 started, the basis being the method of which the late Captain Hayes 

 was the well-known exponent. 



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