FAKED HORSES.

Waikato Times, Volume 102, Issue 17224, 6 October 1927, Page 9

FAKED HORSES.

~ SWINDLERS' BEAUTY PARLOURS. "BISHOPING" AND "BEANTNG." ' I . j London's magistrates are having ~ l more and more frequently to deal with . cases of cruelty to old and worn-out I horses caused by their being kept at I j work, ) Recently a man who at Old Street! I Police Court was ordered to have a j | 20-years-old horse destroyed pleaded that he had not been told its age was j so great when he bought the animal a : few weeks previously. "It looked, j young enough," he said. ! An official of the Royal Society for j the Prevention of Cruelly to Animals : told a reporter that horses that have ! .worked to the limit of their powers in] London are deliberately being "faked" 1 to make them look young. He added:; There is, for instance, what is known I as "bishoping," which- consists of! filing down and cleaning horses' teeth. "Beaning" is the practice of "level- | ling up" a lame "horse. Many a horse ! that is incurably lame in one leg is de- \ libcrately lamed in another to "bal- j once" its movement. This is done so cleverly that when the horse is being made to "show off its paces" before ' prospective purchasers the lameness is j not noticed. ; The "fakers" can make a broken-! winded horse appear to be quite sound by administering to it a concoction, off drugs—the effects of which last until' the animal is sold. j The result of this "faking" is that j large numbers of people who know ' little or nothing about horses are trap- ; ped into buying animals which, perhaps a day later, are ordered by the inagis- ] trates to be destroyed. j The official explained that as most i

"faked" horses are sold without a warranty no action can be taken by the. Royal Society for the Prevention ■ of Cruelty to Animals so long as they are lit to travel to the place where they are sold.