ON HUNTING. 67 



hunting, get off and see if any nails are left on the inside 

 of the hoof, for they will play havoc with the opposite fetlock. 

 If a front shoe is cast, get a temporary one tacked on to get 

 you home, but a hind shoe does not matter much. Have your 

 horse shod at a hunting forge, not an ordinary one. Send him 

 any distance to a hunting blacksmith rather than have him 

 shod at a carriage or cart-horse smithy. The horse has got 

 to be exercised, so he may as well go a long way to be shod. 

 If a horse goes lame suddenly on the road, get down, and you 

 will often find he has got a stone wedged in between the 

 frog and the shoe and the stone is pressing on the sole ; 

 hammer it out with your whip handle. Corns are common, 

 but are not dangerous. Remove the shoe, pare out the corn 

 seat and dress with butter of antimony ; and when the shoe 

 is put back see that the smith springs off the point of the 

 shoe when hot and thus relieves the pressure on the corn. 



Now a word or two on the question of hunting on the 

 cheap, and how the one-horse man may get as much hunting 

 as his one horse will permit. It is a somewhat depressing task. 

 I might as well set out to tell you where to get a good suit of 

 clothes for four guineas or a pair of boots for 30s. If you have 

 but one horse the main thing is not to give him long days. 

 It is the long absence from the stable that tries the horse 

 more than anything else. I believe, if you took your horse 

 to a meet, say four miles off, met at 11 o'clock, and had a 

 good hunt of forty minutes soon after hounds threw off, and 

 at once came home and were in your stable again by 1.30, 

 that a light weight could hunt a sound horse three days a 

 week. But how often do hounds find shortly after they throw 

 off ? They sometimes draw miles of country and do not find 

 till 2 o'clock. Perhaps not then. Often a horse leaves his 

 stable at 9 in the morning, covers twelve miles to the meet, 

 and drags about till 1 o'clock. Then hounds find and you 

 may be galloping, off and on, for a couple of hours, 

 sometimes fast, sometimes slow, and jump any amount of 

 fences. You, perhaps, stay on to the end of the day and 

 at dusk turn for home, possibly fifteen miles off, and are 

 not back till 6.30 ; this is a day from which a horse takes 

 long to recover, unless he is very fit indeed and has a 

 wonderful constitution. 



