DUMB JOCKEYS CONDEMNED. 43 



as his mouth will be tractable enough to be made suffi- 

 cient use of to baffle any attempt he may make to 

 turn restive. 



If the colt show symptoms of restiveness, sit still ! 

 If you take tight hold of the bit and scold him, he may 

 learn that most dangerous of all vices — rearing and 

 tumbling back, which may irreparably injure both his 

 rider and himself. 



I may here as well state that I consider all dumb 

 jockeys worse than useless ; in short, very injurious 

 indeed. Some are manufactured with steel springs, 

 others with elastic gutta percha reins, which keep up a 

 continual wearing pressure on the mouth; so that 

 whether the colt behave well or ill; whether he 

 give his mouth or no, still this irritating pressure 

 continues. 



Such treatment is at once senseless and cruel. What 

 you want to do is to make the colt give his mouth, 

 and so to supple and bend his neck. When the colt 

 discovers that by bending his neck the pressure from 

 the bit ceases, he soon learns to do so with a good 

 grace. I speak feelingly on this point, as I had a 

 very fine and valuable five-year-old colt almost ruined 

 by the gutta percha reins, and it was not until I altered 

 them that he showed any signs of amendment. His 

 custom was to put his head out and hold it doggedly 

 in this position, as he had found out that by so doing he 

 could as easily bear the pressure, and at the same time 

 avoid taxing the muscles of his neck. But the irrita- 

 tion caused by them was so great that he would knock 



