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

In the Stable, Field, and on the Road. 31
less than four times each day, neither ought it to have
violent exercise directly after feeding. Indeed, it is a
safe maxim to always go the first and last mile of a
journey slow. The horse should always have water
before his food ; if you give it water after its food, it
being drunk rapidly, will carry the food through the
stomach in an undigested state and be likely to cause
obstruction of the bowels, the food not being deprived of
its acids, which would be carried into the blood to support
life. There are many stud-grooms who will neither water
nor feed their horse before going out for a day's hunting
others will give a little corn and no water, and think the
horse can go twelve or fourteen miles to cover, and
perhaps gallop thirty or forty miles in the course of the
day upon an empty stomach, when its entire digestive
system is so quick that the food is consumed in half-an-
hour. Then it has to work often from twelve to eighteen
hours without food or water.
The grooms then wonder how the horse's digestive
system goes wrong. First it is smothered in a hot, un-
healthy, ill-ventilated stable ; then it is either burst with
food or starved. Sometimes the blame does not lie at the
door of the groom, but with the master, who thinks he
knows all about horses, because he buys them, and will
not allow a groom to use his own discretion, and is after-
wards grieved to find that his horses are unable to carry
him through a hard run. That a horse can run well after
being well fed has often been proved. "When a boy, a
friend of mine, a stud-groom now in Leicestershire, went
to Ireland for Punchestown races with a horse called
Oakstick. The night before the race the lad had to sleep