134 THE CANTER A DISTRESSING PACE. 



good in a mitigated sense with the road-horse as with 

 the hunter in carrying weight : if they are not pretty 

 well bred, though a kind of ox-like strength may 

 enable them to walk about with a great weight, put 

 them out of that pace, their own want of activity 

 tires them, and their want of courage jades their 

 spirits, and then hold them up if you can. I do not 

 mean to say but that an invalid may be carried very 

 safely and tolerably pleasantly by a stump of a pony ; 

 but in speaking of cobs, I allude to them when they are 

 intended really as hacks to carry weight and go 

 along. 



Without presuming to advise, I will venture to 

 suggest to heavy men, that on the road a pace they 

 are very much inclined to indulge in is by no means 

 the one most safe for themselves or easy for their 

 horse ; I mean the canter. It is true that a canter of 

 half a mile cannot tire anything ; but for a continu- 

 ance no pace distresses a horse so much with a heavy 

 weight on him ; for the very simple reason, that the 

 exertion is not equally divided between the four legs, 

 the leading leg bearing a very small proportion of 

 weight ; consequently the near side or bearing leg is 

 always doing something like double duty. In proof 

 that it is so, if any proof were wanting, put a horse 

 lame on one leg into a canter, you will find in nine- 

 teen cases out of twenty he leads off with the lame 

 leg. If we force him to take off with the sound one, 

 before he has gone far he will change it if he can: 

 this clearly shows that he has sense enough to wish to 

 put the infirm leg where there is the least strain 

 on it. If the strain was the same on both legs, he 

 would of course lead with the one as willingly as the 

 other. We teach horses to lead with the off-leg (in a 



