Hints on Driving

by C. Morley Knight

Hold the off-side reins under little and third fingers of the right hand; then take hold of the near-lead rein with the forefinger some three inches away from left hand; and holding it tight bring it up as much as possible towards the body, at the same time quickly passing the left hand down so as to catch the near-lead rein in front of the right forefinger with the left thumb; then bring the left hand back to its original position, and you have a good loop, and the wheelers are checked from rushing the corner by the lower part of the right hand pressing on the off reins.

|Leader’s tail over reins.| If one of the leaders gets his tail over the reins, never pull at it, but, on the contrary, slack it out. Pull the wheelers across to that side on which the offender is running; then hit the wheeler on the opposite side, on his neck, when the movement of the wheelers to one side will probably clear the rein.

|Loosen rein fixed under tail by hitting horse.| Another plan for getting the rein out is to slack it a good deal, and give the horse a sharp hit with the whip behind the pad; this will nearly always cause him to swish his tail, when you can pull the rein quickly away.

If both the above methods fail, stop the coach at once, when a man must get down and release the rein by lifting up the leader’s tail, and not by pulling the rein away from under it.

|To prevent leader getting tail over a rein.| With a horse that habitually gets his tail over the reins and then kicks, it is a good plan to run the lead rein either through the throat-lash, or the inside loop of the bearing-rein of the wheeler which is on the opposite side of the coach to the kicking leader.

The reins can also be run through the head terrets or loops on the top of the wheelers’ heads, but if this is done it is better to use a bearing-rein, because, if the horse shakes his head up and down, he will inevitably jerk the leader in the mouth.

These terrets have been almost entirely done away with, as, if the leaders pull, they put a great strain on the wheelers’ heads, and if the latter throw their heads up and down to any great extent, they continually jerk the leader’s mouths, |Objection to lead reins passing through head terrets.| whereas by passing the lead reins through the ring on the throat-lash of the wheeler there is almost a straight pull from the leaders’ mouths to the terrets on the pads of the wheelers.

|Side reins.| Side reins are sometimes useful on leaders, and have a good effect on hard-mouthed horses.

If on the outside, they should be fixed to the buckle of the horse’s own trace, but on the inside to that of the other horse.

A very useful kind of side rein has a brass ring sewn into one end of it instead of a buckle; a short strap or loop is passed through this ring and buckled to each side of the bit, while the other end of the rein is buckled to the inside trace of the other horse.