94 HINTS ON HORSEMANSHIP 



The breakdown occurs at the end of a steeple- 

 chase, not at the beginnmg; at the end of a long 

 hunt, not at the first fence. Exhaustion is the 

 only danger we have to fear. I do not, of course, 

 refer to mishaps, such as an overreach, but I do 

 maintain that no horse has sprained a sinew when 

 jumping unless he has been overtaxed. It is 

 curious how firmly the idea that jumping is a 

 danger for horses is fixed in the minds of many 

 hunting people. I knew one man who used to 

 believe that every fence jumped took one day off 

 his horse's life. No theory could have been formu- 

 lated on more slender foundation, unsupported 

 by either theory or practice, and yet his contention 

 was accepted without question. One might as well 

 say that exercise shortened a horse's life, or 

 that dumb-bells in the morning shortened ours ! 

 No; exhaustion alone is the danger, the only 

 danger we have to consider, and provided we keep 

 to small fences the more we jump the better. 

 The Italians say fifty jumps every day, but without 

 binding ourselves to any definite number, it is 

 sufficient to say that it is next to impossible to 

 jump too much, and that if we err it will always 

 be on the side of too little, rather than too 

 much. 



Before jumping is started, however, the usual 

 riding-school lessons must be learnt. It is not the 

 object of these articles to go into details which 

 can be easily obtained in a variety of books which 

 have been written on the subject, but merely to 

 emphasize once more the necessity for the obedience 



