Patroclus and Penelope: A Chat in the Saddle

by Theodore Ayrault Dodge

For if you insert your right little finger between the off reins, and your third finger inside the snaffle rein, and draw the off reins from your left hand slightly, you have a very handy means of using both hands, with the additional value that you can either drop the right reins by easing the length of the left ones to equalize the pressure on the horse's mouth; or by grasping the left reins with right middle finger over snaffle and first finger over curb, you can shift to the right hand entirely. When in this position you can again use the left hand by inserting its fingers in front of the right one and closing upon the reins, as already indicated. In fact, without lengthening the near reins, but merely by placing the right hand in any convenient way on the off ones, you may be ready to use both hands in entirely proper fashion. And in this day of two-handed riding, it is advisable to be able to follow the fashion quickly.

For School airs, this also affords an easy way of using separately curb and snaffle, as is often necessary.

If you are riding with single reins, you will place them on either side of third or little finger, or embracing little, third, and middle fingers and up under thumb in similar manner. A single rein may be held in many ways.

With all other double-rein methods, except the one described, you have to alter the position of reins in shifting from hand to hand. With this one the order of reins and fingers remains the same.

Any other system of holding the reins which you prefer will do as well, if you become expert at it. I have tried them all, from Baucher's down, and have always reverted to what was shown me thirty odd years ago.

Your curb chain should be looser than it is, Tom. A horse needing a stiff curb is unsuited to any but an expert rider, and must have a great many splendid qualities to make up for this really bad one. Some people like a mouth they can hold on by, but they do not make fine horsemen. Never ride on your horse's mouth, or, as they say, "ride your bridle." Many men like a hunter who "takes hold of you," but this won't do on the road, if you seek comfort or want a drilled horse. You see that Nelly keeps jerking at the curb. Let out a link, at least. An untrained horse seeks relief from the curb by poking out his nose, the trained one by giving way to it and arching his neck. It is better at first only to ride on your snaffle rein, leaving your curb rein reasonably loose; or else you may use only a snaffle bit and single rein for a while. But unless you very early learn that your reins are to afford no support whatever to your seat, you will never be apt to learn it. Don't use a martingale unless your horse is a star-gazer, or else tosses his head so as to be able to strike you. It tends to make you lean upon the rein and confines your horse's head.

XXX.

You have now been out a half-dozen times with your new purchase, Tom, and you have managed to get along much to your own satisfaction. You have neither slipped off, nor has Penelope misbehaved. But you are intelligent enough to see that there is something beyond this for you and her to learn. I do not know how ambitious you are. If you want to make Nelly's forehand and croup so supple that you can train her into the finest gaits and action, you must go to work on the stable floor with an hour a day at least of patient teaching, for a number of weeks. For this purpose you must have a manual of instruction, such as I have shown you, and quite a little stock of leisure and particularly of good temper.

The ordinary English trainer thinks that a good mouth may be made in two weeks, by strapping a colt's reins to his surcingle for an hour or two daily, and by longeing with a cavesson. But excellent as cavesson work may be, this means alone will by no means produce the quality of mouth which the Baucher method will make, or which you should aim to give to Nelly.