Swollen legs mostly occur in heavy animals and in overgrown carriage horses; such creatures are of weakly or soft constitutions. They have a vast tendency to become partially dropsical. Fast work exhausts the system of the carriage horse, while high food stimulates its natural disposition toward disease. With heavy horses, the prolonged hours of labor are equally debilitating, and the Sunday's stagnation generates disorder; neither have any innate hardiness to withstand injurious influences; both, when highly fat, have the weakness inherent to their constitutions greatly increased. The quadruped, loaded with the accumulations of many months' repletion, may please the eye of the master; but it is rendered more subject to disease, and less capable of labor or of activity.
Persons who require fast work, should employ light vehicles and small horses; the creatures should be principally supported by grain—a little hay may be allowed during certain times, when the animal's attention requires to be engaged; but the chief sustenance ought to consist of oats and beans. When the carriage is not wanted for the day, care should be taken to see the groom gives at least four hours' exercise.
With regard to the heavy animals, the custom of blowing them out with chaff or hay is not to be commended. A good horse is surely deserving of good provender, and the best manger food is not generally deserving of any higher character than the word "good" may convey. A horse for work should be in sound flesh without being fat; when not required, it should not be allowed to remain in the stable all day. Who, however, ever saw a cart-horse being exercised? These animals have to stand in the stall of a heated stable throughout the Sabbath; the excuse is, that the creatures may enjoy a day's rest. But four hours' easy exercise given at different times, although it might occupy the time of the attendant, would assuredly greatly add to the comfort of the quadrupeds which he is paid to look after.
When a horse is troubled with swollen legs, take it from the stall and place it in a roomy, loose box; nothing more quickly removes this affection than easy and natural motion. At grass, dropsy generally attacks the abdomen; but the author has not heard of the legs being affected in the field, the limbs there being in constant action. Having placed the animal in a loose box, abstain from giving hay for some weeks; procure some ground oak-bark; having damped the corn, sprinkle a handful of the powder among each feed of oats. Particularly attend to the exercise; and should the legs still enlarge, do not allow bandages to be employed, but set both groom and coachman hand-rubbing till the natural appearance is restored.
SITFAST.
This, whenever it occurs, provokes great vexation. Generally it affects animals of the highest value or of fast capabilities, which are used only for saddle purposes. The affection consists of a patch of horn, resembling a corn upon the human foot. These patches are not absolutely large, though of course in size they vary. Neither are they all similar in form or in thickness. In one respect, however, a family likeness runs throughout the kind. They are not simple corns, but their different nature is shown by a margin of ulceration. The situation which they invariably occupy is under the saddle-tree. Their presence, of course, obliges the horse to be disused; and they are the more annoying, since there is no chance of these comparatively trifling ailments disappearing without treatment. The treatment, moreover, cannot be speedy. Whatever measures may be resorted to, time is necessary for the cure; and, during this space, the proprietor sees his horse in high health and spirits, but is forbidden to mount it because of a petty blemish which, in his eyes, is perfectly contemptible.
A SITFAST, AS IT APPEARS UPON A HORSE'S BACK.
Sitfasts, though all said to be caused by the friction of the saddle, have several distinct excitants. The saddle is without life, and cannot of itself injure the quadruped. It is common to account for a sitfast by saying the saddle does not fit. Such may occasionally be the case; for a saddle, if badly made, will chafe the skin and produce a sitfast. But this cause is in operation less often than is imagined. A retired surgeon, whom the author had the honor of visiting at Reigate, wore a cork leg. That gentleman stated that, whenever the leg used to chafe the stump to which it was attached, he always considered his body was out of order. Medicine then was taken, and the symptom disappeared. We mortals refuse to think the horse ails anything unless the animal is alarmingly prostrated. All smaller ills are disregarded; yet that derangement of the stomach which caused the stump of a man's leg to become painful from pressure may, if not attended to, also cause the skin of a horse to exhibit a sitfast.
An awkward horseman is the more frequent source of the complaint. There are gentlemen so very energetic as riders that the best of saddles may be readily moved under them. The saddle must be well made indeed which can, under no circumstances, be stirred upon the back to that extent which is required to generate a sitfast. Loose girths will likewise establish the nuisance, and so also may the saddle-cloth whenever it is hastily put on so as to become thrown into a fold when the horse is mounted.