The management and treatment of the horse in the stable, field, and ...

242 The Management and Treatment of the Horse,
horse that has fresh legs and is nearly as old as Old
Parr, in an hour is brought out as a seven-year- old and
sold as such. Old horses are generally sunk in the eyes,
but after the coper has bishoped his animal he is quite
up to the mark to make the horse have a younger ap-
pearance, so he proceeds to another trick known as
" puffing the glims." This is pricking the hollow above
the eyes with a needle to cause local inflammation and
swelling of the part. The swelling" rills up the cavity
above the eye, and gives the horse a younger appear-
ance, but this only lasts for a day or two, and often ends
in ophthalmia, from the inflammation affecting the optic
nerve. Other dealers who have young horses wish to
pass them off as older than they are for the extra profit
they obtain, and many three-year-old horses are sold as
four-year-olds, and the writer has known them passed
off as five-year-olds. This is done by punching out their
sucking teeth and lancing their gums above the tusk;
when the suckers are punched out the cutters soon
make their appearance, and by lancing the gum it falls
back, and in a few weeks the tusk has made its way
through, so that the mouth of a three-year-old has
much the appearance of a four-year-old colt ; and many
persons not well up with the mouth of a horse are
imposed upon in this manner. This trick is known in
the trade as " yorking the horse." In purchasing a
horse the physical signs of age must be also looked
to, because a young horse may have been too early
put to hard work, and to that extent that it is to all
intents and purposes an old horse in strength and action
when heated by being trotted or galloped all his infirmi-