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He was sold, soon afterwards to a very hard man, and 

 turned out an exceptionally good hunter. He was 

 naturally fond of jumping, or he would not have come 

 right so soon, and had merely been upset by bad riding 

 and a severe bit. 



The worst refuser of all to deal with is the nervous 

 refuser, far worse than the horse which refuses from 

 temper, which can generally be knocked out of him, or 

 from previous bad riding, which can be put right by good 

 and careful handling. It is no use knocking a nervous 

 one about; you must just keep your temper and keep quiet- 

 ly at him. Even so, when they do they are apt to 

 jump very badly and hurt themselves and possibly their 

 rider. 



I remember one such that I owned, a very beautiful 

 thoroughbred r.iare. She was one of the biggest jumpers 

 I have ever ridden, and had s curious knack of bringing 

 her hind legs so sharply up when jumping that she some- 

 times struck the sole of my boot with her hoof. Yet 

 that mare killed herself from nervousness at quite a 

 small place, a small stake and bound fence with a ditch 

 on the take-off side. She tried hard to stop, then at 

 the last moment, finding she could not, she made a half- 

 hearted jump at it and dropped on the fence. A small, 

 sharp, live stake (those are the dangerous ones) went 

 deeply in, and in spite of all our care, in two days 

 it was all over. Poor care, she bore me no ill-will, 

 and would let no one else dress her wound. 



Another very bad case of nerves was again a clean- 

 bred mare, but I knew the root cause of that. She was 

 bought out of training by a relative of mine, whose single 

 idea when riding to hounds was, on any sort of horse under 

 any sort of conditions, to try and go into every field 

 with them. He took her out cub-hunting when the country 



s not fit to ride over, and she deposited herself up- 

 side down in a very big and very blind ditch. She never 

 got over that. If all went well from the first, she v/as 

 a very good hunter; but the slightest peck or mistake 

 upset her, and you could not rely on her, and if she fell 

 she was perfectly useless for the rest of the day. I 

 suppose awful memories of that ditch returned to her, for 



