Length of Preparation - Physic - Exercise Ground - Leading Horses - Riding barebacked - Nature of Exercise - Clothing and Sweating - Daily Distance to be travelled.

I TAKE hunters as typical saddle horses which are to be brought into condition by good stable management and well regulated exercise, and refrain from touching on training for racing, except for the sake of comparison; because it would involve the question of horsemanship, which is a subject outside the province of this book. The exercise necessary to get harness horses into working condition, needs no special description; because, except in the case of match trotters, which need as careful training as racehorses, the powers of these animals are seldom tested so highly as to require a regular preparation. Besides, the urgency of their work is far less than that of horses which follow the hounds.

If a man keeps his hunters during the slack season in exercise, either by hacking or at light trap work, and takes them out cubbing during October, he will seldom need to give them any special preparation before appearing at Kirby Gate on the first Monday of November, or at some less aristocratic opening meet. The majority of hunting men are, however, birds of passage that take their sport like their dinner, without having to prepare it. I shall therefore confine myself in this chapter to remarks which may be useful to stud grooms, or to owners who are their own masters of horse.

If hunters have been out of work for some months, they will probably require at least August, September and October for getting back their muscle and some of their wind.

Before beginning work, it is generally advisable to give a moderate dose of physic, in order to remove from the system an excess of the poisonous material in broken-up tissue which may not at first be excreted with sufficient rapidity for the requirements of hard exercise, and to get rid of superabundant nutritive material in the body. Feverish-ness, filled legs, and other signs of a "heated" state of the system, will often result from neglect of the precaution of giving a hunter a laxative before putting him into work. It is evident that a sound horse which has been kept in healthy exercise and has been fed on suitable food, will require no medicine before being prepared for hunting or any other kind of work. A safe and efficient form of physic for the object in question is Epsom salts, which may be given two or three times a day in doses of 4 oz. in the food, or 8 oz. in one dose as a drench.

There will generally be no trouble in finding fairly good turf on the sides of the road (Frontispiece) for purposes of exercise; and in Leicestershire, the frequent bridle paths afford excellent facilities for this end. Monotony in work is a serious trial to the temper of horses that are being trained for racing, as we may see by the eagerness with which these animals as a rule try to finish their gallops in order to get back to their stables; and it is no doubt a frequent cause of their becoming excitable and learning to pull. Many horses which have been trained and raced, will break out into a profuse sweat if they are brought on a racecourse, and will try to escape from a place which they evidently detest. Hunting, on the contrary, has in the large majority of cases a sedative effect on a horse's nerves; apparently because it is free from monotony, and, when engaged in it, a horse never knows when his work will be completed. Although these influences are by no means so potent for spoiling a horse's temper when the work is slow, as when it is fast; we may take for granted that horses like change of scene, and we should if possible humour them in this respect.

If there is difficulty in obtaining ground for exercise by the sides of the roads or by bridle paths, it is well worth while, if practicable, to lay down an exercising track, which need not be more than half a mile round; although for training racehorses we would require one at least 1 1/4 mile. An owner who takes a personal interest in the stable management and exercise of his animals will generally find it convenient to have such a track in a place which he can see from his house, and thus observe the work that is being done. The ground I like best for exercise is light sand with a covering of mould (humus), which will yield a soft and elastic surface, and, having a porous subsoil, will not hold rain for a long time like clay. Sand by itself is fatiguing to a horse and makes him slow, by reason of its want of elasticity. Clay is very bad; because it becomes as hard as the proverbial turnpike road in dry weather, and is dangerously slippery in wet weather. Chalk, as we find at Epsom, gets very hard during the summer. The "going" can be greatly improved in most cases, and especially when the ground is porous, by frequently giving it a light dressing of stable manure. Although it is the custom of grooms when mounted, to lead a horse always on the off side of the animal they are riding, there is no doubt that this practice tends to spoil the mouth of the led horse by making the near side softer than the off. I would therefore strongly advise that horses should be led as often on the near side as on the off. To this it might be objected that a horse led on the near side of the mounted animal, and travelling on the right side of the road, as is the custom, might, on becoming startled by passing traffic, swing round and get hurt; but the danger of such an accident in the country is too small to outweigh the serious damage done to a horse's mouth by always leading him on one particular side.

As grooms when mounted have rarely any trouble in leading two polo ponies, which are often over 14.3, if not 15 hands high, and are generally more skittish than hunters; I do not see why they should not exercise two hunters in the same way. There would be no difficulty about doing this on a private exercising track.

A groom should not be allowed to ride without a saddle; because by doing so, he is apt to give the animal a sore back. Besides, being less secure in his seat, he will be more inclined to hang on to the horse's mouth; to say nothing of the increased risk of his falling off, and of the horse getting away and hurting himself.

Adopting the routine given on pages 382 to 385, as the best for our present purpose, we may give our hunters 2 1/2 hours' exercise in the morning, and one hour in the afternoon. At first the exercise may consist entirely of walking, for which trotting may be gradually substituted within judicious limits. Horses vary so much in their respective capabilities for standing work, that I will venture only to advise that the first hour in the morning should be restricted to walking, and that that pace should be preserved during the afternoon outing. The usual practice of giving all the hunters that go to exercise from any particular stable the same amount of work, is an evident mistake, which generally arises more from ignorance and inability to form independent conclusions, than from indifference and laziness. As many men who have charge of valuable racehorses train them all more or less alike; it would be absurd to expect that an ordinary stud groom would be capable of regulating the work of each of his animals, so as to meet their respective requirements. As few grooms are good horsemen, and as the danger of unsoundness arising from work increases in proportion to the speed; it is I think best to restrict the pace at which hunters are exercised, to the walk and trot, except when the groom is a thoroughly capable man. If faster work is allowed under such a condition, the ground upon which it is given should be frequently changed, for reasons that have already been explained; and special care should be taken that the animal or animals are extended only up an incline - a gentle one for choice - and on ground that is soft and free from inequalities. An ascent (Fig. 62), by taking weight off the forehand, greatly diminishes the risk of sprain in front, which is an accident that is particularly liable to occur on hard and uneven ground.

I am strongly opposed to the use of clothing for getting down the superfluous fat of hunters; for its effect will be similar to that of a thick coat in causing depression. Such sweating is permissible in a gross racehorse whose legs are too infirm to bear severe work, or whose time for preparation is unduly short; but neither of these conditions should be met with in hunters. If a hunter carries too much "beef," the safest plan is to make him "walk it off," by keeping him out, say, a couple of hours or even longer in the afternoon, as well as by giving him work in the morning.

As a rough approximation, I may say that hunters which are being prepared for the approaching season, may be sent a total distance of from 12 to 16 miles daily. If they are exercised only in the morning, they cannot be expected to do more than 12 miles.