some local trouble, such as pain in the kidneys, a sore mouth, or sharp teeth. In the latter cases, removing the cause will at once effect a cure. But for weakness of loins or hocks, the remedy is progressive work with the flexions with mobilization of the hind hand backward.
A standing martingale will, of course, keep the head from being carried too high. But it will not remove the cause.
PULLING AGAINST THE HAND
A HORSE pulls against the hand when it takes the bit as a point of support. It may do this in either of two ways. In one case, it may object to the pressure of the bit on its bars, and may try to free itself of the pain, by extending its neck forward with muscles contracted, taking a point of support, and pulling with all its might. The corrective for this is a milder bit, and flexions of the mouth and neck. I say, mouth and neck, because sometimes the bars are the reason for the pulling, and sometimes the neck, so that either may be the cause and either the effect.
In the other case, the cause is a bad conformation which was not corrected at the beginning of the education when the horse was young. A badly shaped neck, a few saccades of the reins in the hands of an unskillful rider, and the horse has so vivid a remembrance that it bears against the hand to avoid flexing its neck and opening its mouth. Sometimes, too, if the fore legs are weak, the animal
