Part 7 (1/2)

x.x.xVII.

You tell me that Nelly can only trot and walk, and you want to teach her the canter and hand-gallop. Many horses will naturally fall into a canter if you shake the reins; but some who come of trotting stock will not do so without considerable effort; and still such a horse is often the best one to buy. Now the easiest way to get Nelly into a canter, if she persists in trotting, is to push her beyond her speed, for which purpose you should select a soft piece of ground. So soon as she has broken into a gallop, unless she has been trained to settle back into a trot, you can readily slow up without changing her gait.

If it has been attempted to train her as a trotter, you will have harder work to do this. But there is a little vibrating movement of the hands, sometimes called ”lifting,” which tends to keep a horse cantering, just as a steady pull keeps him trotting. This movement is in the little what the galloping action of a horse is in the great.

The hands move very slightly forward and upward, and pa.s.s back again on an under line.

Apparently, Nelly has been broken in the usual way, for she trots naturally on a steady rein or on the snaffle. Now, you will find that a moving rein or the curb is apt to break her trot, and make her do something else,--either prance, or trot with high unsettled steps, or canter. It is for your own hands, when she gets to the canter, to hold her there. This may take you some time, but you can certainly do it by repeated trials. Having accomplished it, you may, between curb bit and spurs, both gently used, mind you, gradually teach her to carry her head properly at this pace, and get her haunches well under her; and it will give you pleasure to notice how much more natural it is for her to come ”in hand” than on the trot. As the canter is the natural gait of the horse, you will find Nelly soon keep to it if she understands that you so desire. But remember that you should canter or gallop habitually only on soft ground. Hard roads soon injure the fore feet and fetlock joints if a horse is constantly cantered or galloped upon them, because the strides are longer and the weight comes down harder, and always more upon the leading fore foot than upon the other. Moreover, the canter with the hind legs well gathered is apt to be somewhat of a strain to the houghs of the horse unless it is properly--rhythmically--performed, and unless the animal is gradually broken in by proper flexions.

But to canter is one thing. You have yet to teach Penelope to canter on either foot at will, leading off with left or right and changing foot in motion. This is quite another matter, and you will find that it will take some time and a vast deal of patience in both of you.

Let us suppose that you have brought Nell down to a fairly slow canter. Until you can, without effort to her or you, rein her down to quite a slow one, she does not know the rudiments of the gait. To canter properly, she must, without resistance, pull, or fret, come down to a canter quite as slow as a fast walk, even slower, and not show the least attempt to fall into a jog; all this while so poised that she can bound into a gallop at the next stride. Any plug can run.

Few of the saddle horses you meet on the road seem to canter slowly, and yet it is one of the most essential of gaits and a great relief from a constant trot, especially for a lady.

It may perhaps look more sportsmanlike--I don't like to use the word ”horsey”--for a lady always to trot; but no lady, apart from this, begins to look as well upon the trot as when sitting the properly timed park canter of a fresh and handsome horse. Moreover, it requires vastly less art to ride the trot usually seen with us than to bring a high-couraged horse down to a slow parade canter and keep him there, not to dilate upon the gloriously invigorating and luxurious feeling of this gait when executed in its perfection.

Some lazy horses find that they can canter as easily as walk and nearly as slowly, but this disjointed, lax-muscled progress is a very different performance from the proud, open action of the generous horse, whose stride is so vigorous that you feel as if he had wings, but who curbs his ardor to your desires, and with the pressure of a silken thread on the bit will canter a five-mile gait.

x.x.xVIII.

You have probably noticed that Nelly sometimes canters with one shoulder forward and sometimes with the other. Almost all sound horses will change lead of their own accord, but not knowing why. When a horse s.h.i.+es at a strange object, or hops over anything in his path, or gets on new ground, or changes direction, he will often do this. If a horse does not frequently change, it is apt to be on account of an unsound foot, hough, or shoulder, which makes painful or difficult the lead he avoids. But occasionally a sound horse will always lead with the same leg, until taught to change. For a lady the canter is generally easier with the right shoulder leading, and some horses are much easier with one than the other lead. In fact, on the trot, many horses are easier when you rise with the off than when you rise with the near foot, or _vice versa_; and some writers have said that a horse leads with one or other foot in trotting. But as the trot should be a square and even gait, the peculiarity in question is owing to excess of muscular action in one leg and not to anything approaching the lead in the canter or the gallop.

It is possible to teach a horse to start with either or to change lead in the canter without more flexing of the croup than you can give him on the road; but it is worth your while to put Nelly through some exercises which I will explain to you. It will save time in the end.

Their eventual object is so to supple the croup as to render the hind-quarters subject to the rider's will, and absolutely under the control of the horse as directed by him. The flexions of the croup are in reality more important than those of the forehand. Unless a horse's hind-quarters are well under him and so thoroughly suppled as to obey the slightest indication of the rider's leg, he is lacking in the greatest element of his education, if he is to be made a School-horse.

At the same time a supple croup and a rigid forehand cannot work in unison. Both should be elastic in equal degree.

For the purpose of beginning the croup flexions, you can best use the stable floor, or other convenient spot, say after mounting as you start, or before dismounting as you return from your ride, or, better, both. And this is what you should do.

Suppose you are standing on the stable floor, mounted. Any other place will do, but you want to be where you are quite undisturbed. Bring Nelly in hand by gathering up the reins quietly, so as not to disturb her equanimity or her position. Perhaps you had better hold the reins in both hands for these exercises. At all times, indeed, it is well that a horse should be kept acquainted with the feel of the two hands.

In many respects, and for many purposes, I am an advocate of two hands in riding. Do not misunderstand me on this point. My plea is for such education that one hand may suffice for all needs, when the other can be better employed than with the reins; but I myself often use both my hands, perhaps even half the time.

Nelly being collected, gently press one foot towards her flank, if need be till the spur touches her. She will naturally move away from it by a side step with her hind feet. You should have kept her head so well in hand that she will not have moved her fore feet. So soon as she makes this one side step, stop and caress her. Try once more with the same foot. Same result, and you will again reward her with a kind word. Do not at first try to make her take two steps consecutively. If you do so, she may, having failed to satisfy you with one step, and imagining that you want something else, try to step towards the spur instead of away from it, and you will have thus lost some ground. A horse argues very simply, and if one course does not seem to comply with his rider's will, he almost always and at once tries the other.

After a few days, you will find that Nelly will side step very nicely, one or two steps at a time, and before long she will do so in either direction. You cannot, however, consider her as perfect until she can handily complete the circle, with the opposite fore foot immovably planted, in either direction at will, and without disturbing her equilibrium. But this is much harder to do, and if you propose to give Nelly a college education you must first qualify yourself as professor.

You should now at the same time test how well you have taught Penelope to guide by the neck. If you will use the pressure of your legs judiciously, so as to prevent her from moving her hind feet at all, you should be able to describe part of a circle about them by such use of the reins as to make her side step with the fore feet. When she can take two or three steps with fore or hind feet to either side quickly, and at will, keeping the hind or fore feet in place, you have made a very substantial gain in her training.

There can be, of course, only one pivot foot. It is the one opposite the direction in which you are moving the croup or forehand. But to teach Nelly to use the proper pivot foot you must begin much more carefully, and it is perhaps not necessary, if you aspire only to train her for road use, to be so particular.

Properly speaking, you ought about this time to give Nelly a little side suppling of the neck, so as to make the parts respond readily to your will. This is done first on foot, by gently turning the mouthpiece of the curb bit in a horizontal plane, so as to force her head to either side and make her arch her neck, without allowing her to s.h.i.+ft feet. Later, it is done by drawing one curb rein over her neck so as to bring her head sidewise down towards the shoulder, while steadying her with a less marked pressure on the other rein. To do this properly, the Baucher diagrams, or a longer description, would be useful. When the neck is in this exercise perfectly flexed, she will be looking to the rear. With some little practice Nelly will thus readily, at call, bring her head way round to the saddle-flap, with neck arched, and mouthing her bit. Later still, you can practice this flexion mounted, by holding both reins, and pulling a trifle more strongly on one curb than on the other, and steadying her by voice and leg to prevent her from moving. This exercise will make it physically easier for Nelly by and by to respond to your demands, for her neck will be flexible enough for her to hold her head in any desired position without undue effort. And the same thing can be done in motion, if this is not too rapid.

As already said, the circular movement described (termed a pirouette about the hind, and a reversed pirouette about the fore feet) should be made on one absolutely unmoved fore or hind foot as pivot. For, plainly, both feet cannot act as one pivot without twisting the legs.

This pirouette is really a ”low pirouette,” the pirouette proper being a movement by the horse poised on his hind legs alone, describing the circle with fore legs in the air, which is a vastly finer performance.

It will suffice for you, though, Tom, if Nelly will make the pirouette, simple or reversed, without substantially s.h.i.+fting the position of the two pivot feet. But you must remember that if you start with a half-and-half education, it is more difficult to perfect the training than if you start in a more systematic manner; and I do not pretend that these are the proper, but only easy methods.

It is by the union of the side steps of forehand and croup, the former always a trifle in advance, that a horse is taught to ”traverse,” that is, to move sideways at a walk, trot, or gallop. But the traverse is a School gait rarely needed on the road, and a horse may be trained to entire usefulness without being able to traverse, _as a gait_, if he can willingly make a few quick side steps in either direction.