Read Horse Crazy for Free Online

properly
too. It can't be bunched up, but must be straight and perfectly
situated under the saddle with no part of the saddle touching the
horse's bare skin.
    I never saw National Velvet do any of this
stuff, but it was, as they say, just the beginning.
    For example, then there is the unbridled joy
of learning how to bridle a horse. The mechanics of it are not all
that tricky. You throw the reins over the horse's neck, hold the
cavesson in your right hand which is snaked under the horse's chin
and over his nose, and your left hand cups the metal bit. Then, you
just pull the cavesson up over the horse's nose while you guide the
bit into his mouth. Sound disconcerting? If the horse clamps his
sweet little teeth shut and doesn't take the bit as easily as he
does in all the horse books, you need to jam the thumb of your left
hand into the side of the horse's mouth to force his jaws apart
while you slip the offending piece of metal into his mouth.
    This procedure goes under the heading of
being a true test of whether or not you really want to be involved
with horses. If you are willing to stand up in a crowd and say "I
will now stick my hand into a horse's mouth," you may then advance
to the next stage.
    The western bridle, as usual with things
western, tends to make things easier on the rider. There is no brow
band to mash the horse's ears during the bridling procedure,
there's no nose band to have to maneuver his delicate little nose
through; you just insert the bit and flip the cheek strap over his
head and buckle it. Bingo. Couldn't be easier than if they came
into the world already-bridled. (Intriguing image.)
    All the grooming techniques are pretty
standard and vary only slightly from horse to horse depending on
their personalities. Try not to puncture their vulnerable little
frogs when you're learning to scrape crud and debris from their
feet. (It is an accepted law of nature, by the way, that if you
wash your hair the day you go to the stables to see your horse,
then as you are cleaning out your horse's back feet, he will fart
in your hair.)
    Applying a showsheen to your horse's coat
after a shampoo will make him glisten and sparkle; perfect when you
want to show him off at a show or horsy-gathering. It's not,
however, advisable to showsheen his back if you have any attention
of riding him bareback within the next week.
    Mane pulling is a primitive bit of torture
that is essential to perform unless you want your horse to look
like a wild escape from a horse refugee camp...or like he belongs
to a western rider. It involves combing the mane, then back-combing
or teasing a part of it, wrapping the remnant mane around the comb
and then yanking it out by the roots. The horses love this! Would
ask for it specifically if they could talk! In fact, it ranks right
up there with scrotum scouring--another particularly delicate
little task loved by horse person and horse alike.
    It sounds incredible, but when a horse
suffers a laceration, and it begins to heal, one needs, it seems,
to then pull the scab off the wound to encourage it to form yet
another, if smaller, scab.
    Unfortunately, all horses who need this
particular service performed, and depend on me to perform it, would
no doubt lose the afflicted area of gangrene. I'd quite happily eat
dog food first. Or pay some mercenary, horse-loving child to do it.
(It's widely known that the horse-crazy children that hang around
horse barns will due literally anything and for a horse--especially
for a buck.) Scab-pulling can prompt the skin to crawl at only a
little faster rate than the need to peel off a horse's chestnuts.
(Those crusty knobs of skin that form on the inside of a horse's
legs.)
    There is an oft-asked question (and I often
ask it) that wonders how horses in the wild get their feet cleaned
out with nobody to pick them, how they worm themselves, scrape off
their assorted scabs and skin crusts, and maintain the correct
nutritional balance without the vitamin supplements every