43 4 RACE RIDING. 



yards at his very utmost speed without beginning to shorten 

 his stride and go slower ; hence we may conclude that our 

 last resource, the whip, should not be used until we are within 

 a hundred yards of the winning post. Practically speaking, 

 the whip should be very rarely indeed " picked up " before 

 the last thirty or forty yards, nor should more than two or 

 three cuts be given. When a jockey begins to flog, as many 

 of them do, two or three hundred yards from home, we need 

 not be surprised at seeing the horse, after answering the call 

 for ten or a dozen strides, go slower and slower as he nears 

 the judge's box. The horse is then probably condemned as 

 a rogue, and the jockey is praised as a resolute finisher. Some 

 of our best jockeys now and then flourish the whip at the 

 finish without hitting the horse, as a " bit of ki.d," or to make 

 the animal travel faster than he is doing without punishing 

 him. 



Mr. Edwin Martin tells me that he teaches his boys to 

 carry their sticks in the left hand, so that they may use the 

 whip equally well with both hands. Unless a lad is left-handed, 

 he will have no difficulty with the right. Agreeably to the 

 remarks made on the use of the whip, it should, as a rule, be 

 carried in the left on a right-hand course, and vice versa; 

 for horses generally have a tendency to " bear " towards the 

 outside of a course. 



Bad as the spurs are, with respect to ruining a horse's 

 temper and breaking his heart, their evil effects are as nothing 

 compared with those of the whip. I may safely say that 

 a large percentage of horses which have been once severely 

 punished with the whip, are thereby rendered useless, as 

 racehorses, for the remainder of their lives, whenever they 

 have to contend in a close finish. Cecil, in his excellent 

 little book, Stable Practice, remarks about the whip, that 

 "not much benefit often results from it, except with game 

 and indolent animals ; and in using both that and the 



