REINS, VOICE, AND WHIP. 119 



and will ere long obey every mandate that comes directly 

 and firmly from your lips. 



" Hi, over ! " is, for instance, a capital incentive for making 

 a horse fly his fences without hanging at them, — but you 

 must never trade upon an animal's intelligence for the 

 purpose of fooling him, or showing off. I once knew a man 

 who boasted that by simply saying " go ! " he could make 

 his mare jump fifteen feet of an ordinary field, and he 

 tried it twice or thrice for the benefit of unbelieving 

 acquaintances ; but, when next he took the animal out to 

 hunt, and raced her at a brook, with the hitherto magic 

 word screamed loudly in her ear, it proved to be a very 

 decided case of "go," and "go in" also, for she just planted 

 her toes on the brink of it, and, stopping short, sent her 

 over-confident rider head foremost into the water. 



The use of the whip as a means of managing a horse is, 

 unfortunately, too often entirely misunderstood : to hurt, 

 frighten, or coerce with it being seemingly the chief object 

 with many riders. Allowing that all three may at times be 

 necessary — as in the case of vicious horses, for instance — 

 ladies will very rarely find it to be the case, their mounts 

 being, generally speaking, of a gentle and docile type. 

 Leaving, therefore, the abuses of the whip on one side, its 

 uses in the hands of a competent horsewoman are usually 

 reduced to the part which it may be made to fill in 

 helping her to guide her mount on the off side — ^just as a 

 man's second leg assists him in doing — and, in like manner, 

 to press him up to his work. This can, of course, be best 

 accomplished by the aid of a stout hunting-crop, carried 



