62 HOESE-KEEPING FOR AMATEURS. 



action is considerably better where the exercise-ground is 

 thus constituted than where it is perfectly flat : the latter 

 induces a "dishing," daisy-cutting way of putting the fore legs 

 down, which is suitable to no place but the race-course, and 

 not then when the course is at all up and down hill. When a 

 horse is taken into a hunting country where ridge and furrow 

 abounds, it is sinaply astonishing how helpless he is, called upon 

 to suddenly shorten his stride every few feet, and to collect 

 himself for his jumps from off the unequal ground, if he 

 has been accustomed only to gallop on perfectly flat fields. A 

 man I knew some years ago, used to always have two or three 

 young horses about his place, bred by himself, which be invariably 

 sold to the hunting men about the neighbourhood when the 

 animals were four years old. His system of training them 

 was unique : they were handled almost as soon as they were 

 born, caressed, and made familiar with man in every way, so 

 that by the time they were three years of age, and the backing 

 process was to commence, they usually walked away with the 

 unaccustomed burden as though they thought absolutely 

 nothing of it. As may well be imagined, youngsters broken 

 in this way rarely gave any trouble at all. In their earliest 

 days of running about the paddocks their owner had a capital 

 plan for teaching them the rudiments of jumping : in front 

 of the shed, where they ran for shelter in bad weather, and 

 in which they were daily fed, he would dig a shallow ditch. 

 Into this they solemnly walked, and out again the other side. 

 After a time they found it was a more expeditious method 

 to trot up and jump it, whereupon it was made a little wider, 

 and a small bank put up on one side of it. When this had 

 been safely accomplished — often with a scramble and a hoist 

 of the hind quarters, in sheer exuberance of spirits — a gorse 

 fence, 2ft. high, was placed in front of the ditch, and 

 gradually increased in height, but never made too big ; 

 and by the time they were old enough to be ridden gently 

 with hounds, they had no aversion to trying their jumps 

 with a man on their backs, and, moreover, had a very good 

 notion as to how those jumps should be accomplished. In 

 all the phases of handling young horses, it is impossible for 

 too much care and patience to be exercised. Kindness is 

 the only royal road to success ; once let them get frightened 

 of their teacher, and it will take months to eradicate the ill 

 effects. Let a young one do all his first jumps at a walk, 



