120 HACKS AND HUNTERS 



effect that it would on a man preparing to jump, were 

 his arms tied behind him, or pulled by a string attached 

 to the wrists. There is an apt French saying that the 

 heaviest thing on the back of a horse are the hands of 

 the rider. And it is a fact that a horse can jump far 

 greater heights in a corral, even when a dead weight, 

 approximating that of a rider, has been tied on his 

 back, than he can with the average rider.* 



It sometimes seems as if a good rider were actually 

 "lifting" a horse over his jumps, but this only appears 

 so because the rider's hands and the rise of the horse 

 are perfectly timed. In reality, any theory of "lift- 

 ing" is as ridiculous as it would be to attempt to in- 

 crease the speed of a boat one was sitting in by push- 

 ing one's feet against the bow. Many English and 

 Irish horses are accustomed to being held tightly by 

 the head all the way over their jumps, but this method 

 is, to my way of thinking, based entirely on a wrong 

 principle. The properly trained horse will jump best 

 when steadied into his jumps, and then given his head 

 as he takes off. In doing this, however, I do not 

 mean that the reins should be flapping in the breeze, 

 or allowed to slip through the rider's fingers to such 

 an extent that they require "winding up" again after 

 each jump. On the contrary, the horse should be 

 given his head by the rider leaning well forward as the 

 animal takes off. (See illustration facing page 70.) In 

 this way, although the horse has the freedom of his head, 



* Undoubtedly tremendous heights have been jumped by horses 

 with a rider up, and one might possibly doubt whether Confidence, for 

 instance, would ever jump 8 feet y 2 inch unless ridden over it. The 

 reason for this, however, is not that a horse cannot jump greater heights 

 by himself, but that he will not attempt such a monstrous fence unless 

 forced to face it by a rider. The fact that unhampered by a rider he 

 can actually achieve greater height remains, I think, more or less 

 undisputed. 



