3. Ashleigh
4. Liverpool
Bits
If your horse has a very light mouth, and you have not acquired very light hands, it may be better to drive with the reins in the full cheek. If, however, you have acquired light hands, the reins had better be in the half cheek of the Liverpool or Ashleigh, or in the middle bar of the Buxton, as this gives much more control and “feel” of the horse’s
mouth. In fact, no competent whip with light hands, particularly no woman, will want to drive a horse, however light his mouth, in the full cheek. If your horse’s mouth is rather hard and there is danger of his running away, it is better to have the reins in the first hole of the bar of the Liverpool or Ashleigh, but if you drive him this way you must keep a very light hand, as it makes the pressure of the curb chain too severe, and you may make his mouth hard by a constant pressure of chain. If you are unfortunate enough to have to drive a puller, it will probably be necessary to put the reins in the second hole of the bar, and even to twist the curb chain, and to use a special form of bit with a long port or other device intended to stop a pulling horse. No woman, however, should have a pulling horse in her stable.
In pair driving the bitting is most important. It is the rarest thing in the world to find two horses who are not only well matched in appearance but have the same dispositions and require the same bitting. In fact, there is an old saying, “There is always one to a pair.” By correct bitting and a proper adjustment of the coupling reins the differences in the dispositions of the two horses can be equalized, and they can be made to go well together. This is a point which is very frequently neglected by inexperienced
drivers, and few coachmen really understand it, so that you must learn it yourself and see that your coachman has your horses properly bitted and coupled.
The general principle, of course, is that the slow horse of the pair should have the reins in the cheek or half cheek, while the fast horse should have them in the half cheek, or the first, or even the second, hole in the bar, and it may be found necessary to put a severe bit on the fast horse and a plain bit on the slow one. Similarly, if one horse has a light mouth and the other a hard one, the bits and the coupling reins must be regulated and the curb chains adjusted accordingly. It is impossible to lay down any fixed rules to follow. It is all a matter of experiment with the particular pair of horses that you are driving.
Of equal importance with the proper adjustment of the bits and of the reins in the cheek or bar is the adjustment of the coupling reins. These are the two shorter inside reins by which the near horse is coupled with the off rein and the off horse with the near rein. The coupling reins should be so adjusted that the pressure on the reins of each horse will be the same; that is, the off horse should have the same pressure from the off rein as he has from the near coupling rein, and the near horse should have the