THE MODEL SADDLE HORSE 35 



only pounds his feet on the ground but becomes 

 fatigued very quickly, due to the unnecessary expendi- 

 ture of energy. 



Many of our present-day show horses are " unable 

 to get out of their own way" and trot up and down 

 almost in the same place, a fault which should never 

 be tolerated. The other extreme: excessively low 

 action, is equally bad, for a good hack should not 

 "point," "dwell," nor move stiffly with such low, 

 straight-kneed action as to be what is termed a "daisy 

 cutter." 



The hock action is also of great importance. He 

 should under no circumstances drag his hocks, but 

 should use them with alacrity and snap. A woman's 

 horse in particular should have sufficient hock action 

 to assist her rising easily. Many a hack that is quite 

 comfortable for a man, in this regard, is deficient from 

 a woman's point of view. 



The horse in illustration facing page 36 shows a 

 hack moving with quite sufficient knee and hock ac- 

 tion to win in any show ring. 



To all real horsemen or horsewomen the canter is 

 the gait par excellence of the ideal hack. It should be 

 the poetry of motion — the slower the better, and low 

 to the ground. A well-broken hack should be able to 

 "canter all day in the shade of an old apple-tree." 

 Nor do I mean by a slow canter an ambling, lazy sort 

 of lope, but rather the cultivated gait of the horse 

 who is willing to curb his ambition, and, at the demand 

 of his master, puts all his energy into a five-mile-an- 

 hour gait. 



The canter is presumed by most people to be merely 

 a slow gallop, but, mechanically speaking, it has no re- 

 lation to the gallop. A horse going a slow twelve-mile- 



