New Method of Training Horses.

Manawatu Herald, 29 August 1893, Page 2

New Method of Training Horses.

A mode of training horses that has been much in vogue in the colonies for years past is thus referred to by " Rapier " in the Sporting and Dramatic Neivs : — " I heard for the first time the other day of a curious method of training horses whose legs are too bad to stand work when the ground is hard. Instead of making them canter and gallop they are made to swim ! The action of swimming, it is said calls into play all the muscles exercised in fast work on the turf, and a quarter of a mile in the water is equivalent to five or six times the distance on land. Who invented the system I do not know, but I am told that years ago Captain Machell practiced it in Ireland. He had a 'chaser with such sorry joints that its breakdown seemed imminent ; but the horse could gallop and jump, and he got through several races by the expedient of training him in a canal. When driven in the animal's first endeavour was not unnaturally to get out again, and to prevent this a man with a poll was stationed on each bank. By this the horse was guided onwards until it was thought he had been in long enough and gone a sufficient distance. Besides exercising the muscles and clearing the wind the practice is beneficial, because cold water is an excellent thing for the legs. As my readers are probably aware, Mr Arthur Yntes often keeps horses for houri together in the little river which flows through his property ; but the stream is shallow, and they walk or else stand in a box throngh which the water runs. The swimming is to me quite new, but there is warrant for the assertion that it answers."