CHAPTER XXXIV. 



MANAGEMENT OF ROAD AND DRIVING HORSES. 



Start out moderate — Long distance — Water frequently — Checking — Hitch- 

 ing to buggy — Whip g- Feeding on the road — Short-distance driving 

 — Reins well in hand. 



THESE have been periods in my varied and busy life when 

 my business required much driving on country roads, 

 and sometime of upwards of sixty miles in a day. I usually 

 had a good horse for these long routes, and knew — or thought 

 I knew — very well how to drive and take care of them. My 

 way was — and is — when starting out with a recently fed and 

 watered horse to drive the first five or ten miles about as slow 

 as a good road horse will naturally travel, and by that time 

 they will have gotten themselves into condition for good road 

 work and will be ready to take a good, comfortable road gait 

 for the next ten or twenty miles without distress or fretting. 

 "When driving on hilly roads I allow the horses to walk up hills 

 and drive very carefully and with a snug rein down the hills, 

 always taking advantage of the best, smoothest, and level 

 places in the road to make up my time. 



When driving long distances I never enter into brushes or 

 races with others on the road, but always drive as steadily and 

 easily as possible. Many has been the time when driving long 

 distances on the road that someone has driven out of a yard 

 or stable when I was about opposite, and, going my way, have 

 driven past and away from me — perhaps entirely out of sight 

 — but after a few miles of steady driving I have come up to 

 them, and perhaps passed them and driven away, out of sight 

 and hearing of them for the rest of the journey. When driv- 

 ing on the road in summer I water frequently, giving a little 

 at a time. I never check hard when driving long distances — 



(266) 



