Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 July 1876 — The Way to Drive Horses. [ARTICLE]

The Way to Drive Horses.

With few exceptions teamsters guide and drive their horses and mules quite too much with the reins. Most teams are so accustomed to be pulled and hauled incessantly by the lines that they do not know how to act when the driver is not tugging away, applying the whip and bawling. Horses should be taught to go where the driver would have them when, the reins are slack. If a horse is headstrong and the driver is required to hold him back with a firm hand, it is sometimes a sensible practice to put on a check rein and require the animal to cany his head* little higher than he is accustomed to cany it without a check rein. When a driver is mowing grass with a machine he should hold a steady rein or a slack rein, and avoid the practice of keeping the heads of the animals moving incessantly to the right and left with a constantly vibeating motion. Let the driver keep his eye on the heads and fore feet of the team rather than cm the machine. Let the eye glance only occasionally at the machine rather than keep looking at the implement, casting a glance now and then at the team, u the team is guided properly

the implement behind tlie team will move in the proper place. A great many inexperienced driver* will watch the harrow, or mower, or reaper, instead of tlie team, and, before they are aware of it the horses or muleswill be two or three feet either to the rigid or left of the proper place. When harrowing we walk by the side of tlie driver and instruct him to look forward of the team along the edge of the harrowed ground, then keep the eve on the head nnd forward feet of tlie animal nearest tlie harrowed ground. Hold the lines steadily, but not too firmly. If you desire tlie team to move either way, pull one rein only a little. Avoid pulling the team so far to the right that you must immediately haul on the left line. When the mowing machine is in use aim to drive straight, which can be done only by holdimr a steady line. Teach the team, if poesibic to go right with slack lines. Almost any team can readily be taught to travel close to the standing grass without lieing hauled by the lines to tlie right or left. When the lines are slack and a team liegins to turn only a trifle too much to the right or to the left pull one rein only a trifle. Let inexperienced drivers lie taught that the common practice of pulling and hauling this way and that way on the lines, and then fretting and scolding at the team because they do not move straight forward, will worry and fret a spirited horse more than all the labor he performs. —N. Y. Herald.