Hints on Driving Author:Captain C. Morley Knight Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER I. HARNESS. It is often said by those who have little or no experience, that four horses steady themselves, and require therefore little skill in dri... more »ving. This is a very great error, and a man who is keen to learn should make it his first aim to driv.e one horse well, and having thoroughly mastered this accomplishment, he should then proceed to handle a pair. In driving the great aim is to get the horses going well together, and all doing their fair share of work without taking more out of the driver than is absolutely necessary. In order to arrive at this it is essential to have the Fitting of harness. The collar. Sore shoulders. horses properly bitted, rightly coupled, comfortably poled up, and the harness fitted correctly. To begin at the beginning, it is first of all necessary to see that the harness fits the horse. The collar is a very important point. This should lie flat on the horse's shoulders, so as to give sufficient room for the fingers to pass between it and the horse's neck at the sides, and the flat of the hand should be able to pass freely between the lower part of the collar and the horse's neck. Before putting the collar on, it ought to be widened by lateral pressure with the knee, so as not to hurt the horse's eyes while passing over his head. If the horse's shoulders should get rubbed, the best remedy is to apply plenty of sweet oil. This prevents the skin getting hard and the hair coming off. Salt water should never be used. The hames should fit the groove in the Hames. collar, which should be well recessed, correctly all round and be buckled up tightly, otherwise in double harness they are very liable to be pulled out when going down hill, or when pulling up suddenly. To prevent this, a small strap may be buckled round the bottom of...« less