During my hunting career I was often shown in the summer months at the local shows, sometimes as a hunter, and sometimes as a lady’s hack, and I won a number of prizes in both classes. The hunters that then appeared in the show-ring were inferior to those of to-day, or else I should never have made the mark I did. But what amused me most was winning prizes as a lady’s hack. My manners were perfect, my paces anything but the correct thing, and my canter far too “short”; and then my poor fore-legs! I stood over frightfully at the knees, and avoided detection by spreading myself out and placing my fore-feet well in front of me. The judges might move me about as much as they pleased, but, as long as I was in the ring, nothing would shake my determination to abandon this very unnatural pose. Having owed my success in the prize-ring to the custom of judges not to get up and ride ladies’ hacks, it would ill become me to decry the system. Some people would say that instead of being kept up all the summer, it would have been better for me to have been turned out at grass. I have my own decided opinions on this question, having had experience of both systems. I certainly do not think it right to keep a hunter in hard work from the end of one season to the beginning of another. At the close of the season, shoes should be taken off, and the horse be turned into a loose-box with a yard, and bedded down with tan and sawdust, if not with straw. There he should have six weeks’ repose. After that, there is no harm in taking him up, if he has not weakness or accident needing a long rest. To be in a good stable on the best of diet, and to be gently hacked a few times a week, will keep him fit and healthy, and not prevent him putting on plenty of beef to start him well for the next season. I have gone to hounds with greater ease after summers so spent, and been ready in a week or two to do the longest days without distress; whereas, when I have been turned off for the whole summer, I have come up fat and thick in the wind, and it has taken several months before I could do my work with comfort to myself and satisfaction to my rider. But the worst experience I ever had was being turned out. I ate tons of grass, and laid on any amount of flabby flesh, till my legs ached under my carcase and sagging belly. My legs, instead of fining down, became bigger as I stamped about, plagued all day long by the flies, and waiting for the end of the long summer days when I could feed in peace. Then it was Christmas before I really exchanged my soft for real hard flesh, and felt equal to a long day. If hunters are to be turned out to grass, they should be kept in during the hot days and turned out in the evenings.