CHAPTER IX 

 HORSES AND STABLES 



IN connection with hunting there is no more im- 

 portant question than that of horses. To be well 

 carried during a run with hounds enhances the 

 enjoyment one hundred fold, and to be badly carried 

 means converting what in a natural way should be a 

 pleasure into a most uncomfortable task. There is 

 a period of one's life when ability to gallop and jump 

 is the only thing looked for in a hunter, when bad 

 manners are lightly thought of, and even vice is looked 

 upon with a lenient eye. There are, too, some men, 

 and not a few women, who can make themselves at 

 home and be thoroughly happy on what the average 

 hunting man would call a rotten bad horse, and there 

 is another and a smaller group of individuals who can 

 succeed in getting to the front on horses which, in 

 ordinary hands, would be hopelessly tailed off before 

 hounds had been running ten minutes. 



But to the majority of men and women it is essential 

 that their hunters should be, at least, useful animals ; 

 that they should have a fair amount of endurance, be 

 able to gallop at a steady pace, and to jump smoothly 

 without rushing their fences, while — most important of 

 all — they should be free from vice, and have manners 

 which are reasonably good. It is well enough for 

 those whose business it is to make hunters to come out 

 on raw, half-broken horses, who have all their educa- 



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