106 Cross Country with Horse and Hound 



after you have been riding a way and increases as you go 

 on, you may know it is to relieve pain, and by that same 

 sign that the fault is with yourself. In the first case there 

 is little you can do except to drop the bit well down in a 

 new place and make the best you can of the situation. In 

 the latter case, as the fault is principally with your riding, 

 it is simply a question of cultivating your hands. If it is a 

 congenital want of sensitiveness of touch, I do not know of 

 any help. If it comes, as it usually does, from a faulty 

 position of the hands, the remedy is with yourself. 



The habit of pulling, in a great many cases, comes from 

 a bad or improper seat when negotiating a jump. I have 

 already called attention to this point in the chapter on 

 "Seat." The reason a horse gets to pulling, or rushing 

 his fences, except in cases of funk on the part of horse 

 or rider, is that when a man sits rigid and is obliged 

 to catch at the bridle-reins for support he punishes the 

 horse's mouth so severely that the moment his feet touch 

 the ground, away he rushes as if he had had as severe a jab 

 with the spurs as he actually has had in the mouth. When 

 a horse has been ridden over a few fences in this style, he 

 associates that awful jab in the mouth with the act of 

 jumping. He knows as he approaches a fence that there 

 will be a pull at his head enough to extract a tooth, and 

 he naturally rushes to get over the agony as quickly as pos- 

 sible or refuses the jump altogether. Nor is this all. 

 When he gets within eight or ten strides of his fence he 

 goes at it with two or three times the amount of force 

 required to clear the obstacle, all of which is only so much 

 more energy consumed to no purpose. So matters go on 



