Dick Christian's Lecture. 445 



he can make a second effort. If you drop him he can't. Horses have a bad mouth on the 

 near side because they're always ridden with one hand. 



"A horse wants a deal of handling at high timber. If we did not get their fore legs 

 high enough, their knees 'ud get below it, and over they goes. Their tails often came clean 

 bang into my face. 



" A quick, safe jumper always goes from hind legs to hind legs. If a horse can't 'light 

 on his hind legs he soon beats himself Good rumps and good hind legs, them 's the sort ! 



" In the Low Hills country it's most of it plough — the fields not more than ten acres, 

 with a single fence with a ditch, and some with a ditch on both sides, not ve>y wide, but 

 wide enough to throw a horse down. The slower you ride at them the better. They want 

 a handy horse — a perfect hunter, not a flying horse. In this country the horses can't stand 

 above half an hour if the hounds keep straight on without a check. 



" In the Vale [of Belvoir] the fences are tremendous when you come at them — staked 

 and bound, wide ditches, timber very big. I once heard a reverend gent say he fairly 

 trembled before a Vale fence, ' to think how he could get over.' And there 's thirty miles, 

 right on end, of grass all the way to Harborough. 



" When I wanted to teach a horse to leap, I took him to a very low-fixed bar, or the 

 trunk of a tree — not more than knee-high — and held him there until I got him on his hind 

 legs, then let him go. As likely as not he dropped on the bar ; I was patient, took him to 

 it again and again ; if he turned nervous, I soothed, and waited until he had calmed down. 

 When he went readily at a staiKl from his hind legs I started him at a trot or canter, and 

 made him slowly fly the body of a tree — so as to spread himself — or four feet of water. 

 When I began on natural fences, I began with small places — first walked and then trotted 

 at them — and soon was able to go over them at any pace I liked. 



" The thing is to give your horse confidence ; then you may take liberties with him ; 

 but do it calmly and in good temper, and keep him in the same. At stitchers [wide hedges 

 and ditches] don't go too fast, so that he cannot measure his stride, or too slow, or he may 

 stop ; many horses have been spoiled by both mistakes. Give your young horse time to 

 get his hind legs under him. If you're too slow, or have him too hard on the curb, he 

 bucks, does not spread himself jumps short into a far ditch, and then down you both go. 



" When you set a horse going at his jumps hold him steadily by the head, not pulling 

 him hard; the longer you hold him steady the further he'll go. A horse docs not jump 

 furthest by going over-fast at his fences, or even at water ; he wants to be able to measure 

 his strides up to where he takes ofi". He can't last long in a fast run if he's not kept collected, 

 especially over deep ground, and ridge and furrow." 



Brutal horsemen have not patience for such considerate methods of making horses leap. 

 They tumble them about until they either learn to rise or are completely cowed. Some- 

 times the rude method which Assheton Smith practised succeeds. I have a well-authenticated 

 account of a horse that, after falling twenty-eight times in going across a stiffly-enclosed 

 country, finished by jumping, clean and clever, a new high, spiked gate, and never refused 

 afterwards. But in nine cases out of ten, in a like experiment, if the rider had not been 

 killed the horse would have been a coward for life. 



"If," said Dick Christian, "a horse gets a bad fall it frightens him, and he does not 

 enjoy fencing like one that has never had a fall. Let a young one scramble a bit in a ditch 

 sitting quite still on him, but not so as to get cast." 



