62 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



like as high as you know the colt could take. Keep them 

 low at first, so that he will not be flurried. 



After a month your weanling will have such perfect con- 

 fidence that he will begin to acquire knowledge of other 

 things, viz. : how best to gather his hind legs under him 

 before making the spring, and also how to judge the dis- 

 tances. Next winter the same jumps can go a few inches 

 higher. He could jump four feet if you asked him, but do 

 not ask him. Whatever you do, keep the fences low. 

 The thing you wish now to teach is not high jumping, but 

 confidence to gather and take off. After this winter it is 

 quite as well not to ask the colt to jump any more until 

 you begin to ride him, for he may contract bad habits. 



I have little faith in the " larking " system. The worst 

 refusers I have ever seen in the hunting-field were horses 

 daily larked as colts until they jumped over six feet. It is 

 one thing for a colt to get himself over a jump, and quite 

 another thing to carry weight over. 



During the winter in which he reaches three years old 

 the colt should be bitted or mouthed as described on page59, 

 taught to rein and back, and be broken to harness. Toward 

 spring he is mounted. The following summer, when three 

 past, his jumping lesson with a rider up begins. 



A light snaffle-bit is put on, and he is taken out, in com- 

 pany with an old hunter, over a ditch say two feet deep 

 and a log two feet high on the way to his exercise, and a 

 little higher across the log and at a deeper place in the 

 ditch coming home. The incentive of returning home 

 gives you this liberty. The colt himself says all this is too 

 easy, but give him two months of it, nevertheless. Make 



