Horse Companionship 265 



or a cat or a bird a trick which another would require weeks to 

 instruct them in, if he did not fail altogether. Yet, while it is 

 true that a person who loves animals is more likely to train them 

 easily, the power cannot be attributed to love, for often an entire 

 stranger can make an animal do things which the o\\^ier, who 

 loves the creature dearly and is in turn dearly loved, fails to 

 accomplish. One man will take a horse that he has never seen 

 or ridden before through a cross-country run to hounds, and 

 bring him in at the death without exhausting him as much as his 

 owner would, although the latter may be as good ai horseman and 

 lighter in weight. Every hunting field aifords examples of this, 

 which cannot be accounted for by difference of horsemanship. 

 Writers on hunting all agree that some men can make a horse do 

 most incredible things, and attribute this wonderful power of 

 control to " better hands," " better seat," or what not. It must 

 be admitted that a person with very bad hands or a bad seat, or 

 both, may irritate a horse and take more out of him in a run than 

 a man with perfect hands and seat ; but an explanation on this 

 basis does not account for the fact that a better rider and a lighter 

 can come through a run with the better-conditioned horse pumped 

 to a turn, while another man who has ridden the same line brings 

 his horse in comparatively fresh ; or that two such men may 

 change horses in the next run and find the results change too. 

 The fact has been demonstrated so often in every hunting-field 

 that I need not enlarge upon it, except to say we must look further 

 than any theory as to hands and seat, or the power of love, in ex- 

 planation of such phenomena. 



Most of my readers have doubtless seen, at exhibitions through- 

 out the country, examples of the wonderful control some men have 

 over animals, the wild becoming tame, the nervous quiet, and the 

 vicious tractable under their magic influence. Such things are 

 sometimes explained by the skeptics as the result of " doping." 

 From personal knowledge, however, as a pupil of Earns, and 

 from personal acquaintance with the late Professor Xorris, and 

 since with his son Mr. Stuart Norris, who is following in the 

 footsteps of his illustrious father in the training and exhibition of 

 trick horses, I am positive in saying that there is absolutely no 

 foundation in attributing to this " doping '' theory the wonderful 

 power of control which these men display. 



