128 LIGHT HORSES: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. 



thick-shouldered, very short of quality, and with rough, un- 

 comfortable action ; yet so long as they can bring their knees 

 sufficiently near their noses their owners think them fit to 

 exhibit. Some years ago, in writing about cobs, an acknow- 

 ledged judge of horses remarked that the requisites for this 

 sort of hack were perfect quietness, good shoulders, a reason- 

 able amount of length, manners and quality, and he con- 

 tinued, " If the cob can walk four miles an hour, trot with 

 equal ease six or ten miles an hour, canter as slow as five 

 miles an hour, then let the owner, if a rich man, cling to him, 

 for he will not get such another in a hurry ; if a poor man, let 

 him not hesitate to open his mouth, and demand for his cob a 

 sum which shall make an appreciable difference in his year's 

 income." 



It has often been said that a park hack should be highly 

 trained to answer more readily than the hunter to aids and 

 indications. No possible exception can be taken to this 

 doctrine, provided only that the rider is likewise educated up 

 to the higher development of equestrianism. A hack that 

 suddenly stops, traverses, passages, or does something else on 

 receiving an unintentional hint, would be nothing short of a 

 nuisance to a rider who is not fairly well up in the details of 

 la haute ecole. In common parlance, a hack may be too well 

 broken ; but above all things he should be docility itself. A 

 man who is making a young horse may naturally expect his 

 steed to sit up with him now and then ; or in consideration of 

 brilliant performances in the field a hunter which will not go 

 quietly to covert may be tolerated ; but for park work or for 

 quiet road riding, lamblike placidity is a sine qua non. 



It is seldom or never that the hack not being a covert hack 

 or some useful slave kept for the sole purpose of " supplying 

 a want," and getting over the ground as quickly as possible, is 

 required to travel fast ; consequently pace is a superfluous 

 quality in a horse required for the park. But a hack should 

 be a good walker, and no pains should be spared to make him 

 excel in this mode of progression. In teaching a horse to walk 



