progressive gymnastic until the requisite strength is attained.
BEATING AGAINST THE HAND
NOTHING is more uncomfortable on horseback than a mount which, at the slightest effect of bit or snaffle on its bars, refuses to obey, and to avoid the contact shakes its head in every direction, or, as the French call it, battre à la main.
There are several reasons for this defect. Most generally, it is due to some rider's too severe hand on bars that are too sharp, to a bridle wrongly adjusted to the horse's mouth, to too tight a curb chain, or to some previous saccades against sensitive bars. All these result from ignorance on the part of the rider or of the caretaker. They are corrected by the rider's greater experience, better instruction in horsemanship, a change in the bit, or, mechanically, by a standing martingale.
Very often, too, the beating against the hand is the consequence of some defect of conformation, some wound or lameness. The horse's head and neck are like the balancing pole of the rope dancer; and if there is something wrong with the conformation of the backbone or its spine, some trouble with the kidneys, the coupling, or the pelvis, if the muscles of the back have become sore under the saddle, the horse may, in consequence, shake its head. But the cause will be in some derangement of the animal mechanism.
