198 PINK AND SCARLET 



Thinking of South African horses naturally 

 brings up the subject of knee-haltering. When 

 horses are turned out on the veldt to graze (and 

 many South African horses get no other food) they 

 are knee-haltered to prevent them from straying 

 too far away, and to make them easy to catch. 

 Knee-haltering is very simple and very efficacious. 

 Plate XVIII. shows the knee-halter. A clove 

 hitch is made round the leg above the knee, allow- 

 ing about a foot of rope between the horse's knee 

 and his chin ; two half-hitches are then made with 

 the spare end, round the standing part of the rope, 

 and the rest of the spare part is used up with 

 additional half-hitches, or by being carried on to the 

 head collar and secured there. None of the spare 

 rope should be left loose, or hanging in loops, 

 as the horse might put his other foot on, or 

 into, it. 



Horses take readily to the knee-halter,^ and very 

 soon regard it as a matter of course, and many of 

 them are difficult, some impossible, to catch, how- 

 ever short the halter is made. The only thing to 

 do with these is to hobble them ; with some even 

 this is not enough, and it is necessary to tie a hind 

 foot to a fore one. 



Knee-haltering is unknown in England, and, 

 judging by a picture which recently (September '99) 

 appeared in one of the oldest and best-known of 



^ The pony shown in Plate XVIII. is a nervous animal, and 

 had never had a knee-halter on until five minutes before she was 

 photographed. 



