H E -:- H O R S E 



CHAPTER III. 



How the rider controls his horse — Bits, and how they work — 

 The Martingale — Spurs — Whips — Balance — How to start and 

 stop a horse — How to make a horse slide — Backing a horse — 

 Changing direction — Changing leads at a gallop — Teaching 

 the horse to trot and to walk — Riding without reins. 



Control. — The four principal factors 

 through which the rider maintains control 

 over his mount are the reins, whip, spurs and 

 balance. 



Bits. — The two basic principles of practi- 

 cally all bits are snaffle pull and shank 

 leverage. A snaffle is a bar bit broken in 

 the middle, held up in the mouth by the 

 headpiece and prevented from being pulled 

 from the side of the mouth by the chinstrap. 

 The force of the bit applied in this way, 

 for the purpose of control, is the pressure 

 of the broken bar on the tongue and the 

 lower jaw. The leverage bit — for example, 

 the Pelham — controls the horse by the up- 

 ward pressure of the chinstrap and the 

 downward pull of the straight mouthpiece, 

 which, when force is exerted, has the tend- 

 ency to hold the lower jaw in a kind of 

 vise, and the back pressure of the reins has a 

 deterrent effect and a tendency to hold the 

 horse back. The severity of this kind of a bit 

 depends especially upon the ratio between the 

 length of that part of the shank extending 



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