Page:Hints to Horse-keepers.djvu/36

28 lean, bony head, small-eared, broad-fronted, well set on, upon a high, well-carried neck, thin at its junction with the head; high withers, thin, and, above all, long, sloping shoulders. A straight shoulder is an abomination; it renders speed impossible, and gives a rigid, inflexible motion, often producing the bad fault of stumbling. She should be wide-chested, and deep in the heart-place. Her quarters should be strong, well let down, long and sickle-shaped above the hocks. It is better that she go with her hocks somewhat too wide apart than too near together—the former point indicating power, the latter, weakness of a bad kind. It has been shown that a brood mare may, nay, should, be considerably longer in the back than one would choose a working horse to be; but if she be particularly so, it is desirable to put her to a short-backed and close-coupled horse. "In health," says the same writer who has been quoted above, "the brood mare should be as near perfection as the artificial state of the animal will allow; at all events, it is the most important point of all; and in every case the mare should be very carefully examined with a view to discover what deviations from a natural state have been entailed upon her by her own labors, and what she has inherited from her ancestors. Independently of the consequence of accidents, all deviations from a state of health in the mare may be considered as more or less transmitted to her, because, in a thoroughly sound constitution, no ordinary treatment, such as training consists of, will produce disease; and it is only hereditary predisposition which, under this process, entails its appearance. Still there are positive, comparative and superlative degrees of objectionable diseases incidental to the brood-mare, which should be accepted or refused accordingly. All accidental defects, such as broken knees, dislocated hips, or even