CHAPTER XII.
LIMBS—THEIR ACCIDENTS AND THEIR DISEASES.
OSSEOUS DEPOSITS—SPAVIN.
"One horse could wear out two pairs of legs," is an old jockey's phrase. Most men, when purchasing a dumb slave, pay great attention to the lower extremities. If an animal be used up or has performed hard work, the indications are sure to be found on those parts; but what a comment does the language and the act referred to pass upon the conduct of those masters, the history of whose treatment, or rather whose abuse of a living creature, is thus sought for and often found upon a breathing frame!
A PARK NAG WITH BONE SPAVIN LED OUT OF THE STABLE.
Before the strength has departed, or the legitimate number of years are exhausted, cruelty deprives a most obedient drudge of its power to serve. The history of almost every horse in this kingdom is a struggle to exist against human endeavors to deprive it of utility. Nature, when she made the animal, formed a creature hardly second to her master-piece in anatomical perfection; the legs are strong, but, in his impatience and in his blind obedience to the dictates of fashion, man will put them to their fullest use before their structure is confirmed. Racers go into training when one year old. Carriage horses, omnibus machinery, cart horses, nags, roadsters, may-birds, and park hacks generally come into work about the third year. The animal, however, does not cut all its teeth till the completion of its fifth birthday. It requires to look upon eight seasons before its adult period is entered upon; and yet at the third year, or before that period, it is put to such work as only a horse can or does perform.
When the horse was designed to be only matured, the frivolity of mankind pronounces the creature to be aged. The life is, indeed, generally worthless before the eighth year is entered upon. The young flesh, bones, and sinews, long before that time arrives, are made the seats of poignant diseases. Work, not in the first instance laborious, but sudden and energetic beyond what the frame of the young horse can endure, casts it out of the gentleman's stable. Once removed from that place, its descent is rapid. From the carriage to the cab is a leap often cleared in equine history; but every change adds misery to its lot. It fares worse, lodges worse, and works harder with every new proprietor, till at length, as its years and wretchedness accumulate, Nature interposes and takes the sufferer to herself.