Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece Part 5

If you have anything to carry which entirely occupies one hand, and which occasionally may require both, such as an umbrella in wind, or an over-fresh horse to lead at a quick pace, tie up one or both reins; it obviates the possibility of a horse, wild with his head, drawing the reins through the hand, and consequently the necessity of using both hands to shorten them. At the same time, being held with the breadth of the whole hand, at the centre, distinct single-handed indications can be given on the reins.

[Sidenote: Its use to a soldier.]

[Sidenote: Its use with the restive horse.]

A soldier should go to single combat with one of his reins in this way.

To have to use his sword hand to shorten his reins may make the difference of life or death to him. In the case of his adversary gaining his left rear, by dropping the reins the sword is instantly shifted to the left hand, and the short rein is instantly grasped with the right hand at the proper length. As the soldier is only trained to use his sword with his right hand (this might be remedied by my sword exercise), it is not likely that his left hand should be a match for his adversary's right, but he will at least be able to keep his adversary at a distance by striking or pointing at his horse's head. This would be a hopeless affair with the right hand, particularly for a cuira.s.sier. To be able to present a pistol to the rear with the left hand would be invaluable in such a case. The power to drop and instantly resume the short rein also allows two hands to be occasionally used to the lance or carbine; a skirmisher therefore should have one rein tied up. A pulling horse may be ridden with one or both reins tied, also a restive horse; his usual mode of resistance is running back and rearing, because from fear of his falling backward chastis.e.m.e.nt usually ceases then. In such a case quit the reins, lay hold of the mane with both hands, ply both spurs, even while the horse is on his hind legs, and the moment he flies from them, the reins are seized in the mode to be used most powerfully without requiring any adjustment. If the horse will not answer the spur, with the left hand hold the mane, and with the right ply the whip under the flank even when he is on his hind legs.

[Sidenote: Should not be used in hunting, or swimming a horse.]

The reins should never be tied in hunting, or in swimming a horse, since, by catching across the neck, they act like a bearing rein, and oblige the horse to carry his head up and his nose in. In hunting this would bring his hind legs on his fences, and oblige him to leap from the top of his banks and _to land all fours_, instead of extending himself and letting himself down gently. In swimming it obliges him to keep his whole head and neck out of water; I very nearly drowned a horse in this way in the Serpentine.

[Sidenote: Objection for common riding.]

[Sidenote: Short rein of the East.]

[Sidenote: Used by postilion.]

For common riding the objection is that you cannot lengthen or shorten the rein; therefore, to give more liberty, or to shorten the rein, the hand must go from or to the body. If, therefore, the reins are tied so that the hands should be at a convenient distance from the body when the horse is collected, they would be at a very inconvenient distance when he is extended. To remedy this, in the East, where the short rein is very universal, the double part of the bridle is prolonged by a single strap; this strap is used as a whip, and hence the whip of the Hussar attached to the reins; hence, also, as I imagine, the Austrian driving rein described page 54. When fossil remains of the extinct postboy shall be discovered, it will be seen that he used the short rein, and with great propriety; since his horse may be said to have been always "au trot," and needed only one degree of collection.

CHAPTER X.

COLT-BREAKING.

Colt-breaking is the best possible lesson for the rider.--The head-stall.--The snaffle.--Longeing.--Saddling.--Mounting.--Sermon to the colt-breaker.--The n.o.blest horse resists the most.--The horse has a natural _right_ to resist.--The colt wants no suppling.--He wants to be taught the meaning of your indications.--And to be brought to obey them.--The leaping-bar.--Fetch and carry.

[Sidenote: Colt-breaking the best lesson for riding.]

The very best lesson for a horseman, young or old, is colt-breaking; and if in the attempt the _young_ horseman fails to do the colt justice, he will at least do him less injury than the country colt-breaker, or the generality of grooms.

I shall detail the plan of an _old_ horseman; though, perchance, its want of "dresses, scenery, and decoration" may offend, my chief implements being a stick, some string, and some carrots.

I have always said that the colt is half broken when he will come to your whistle or call in the field, and eat carrots out of your hand; and that he is quite broken when you have got the head-stall on him.

[Sidenote: The head-stall.]

The colt _should_ wear a head-stall from the earliest days, and be held by the head while he is rubbed and caressed. If this has been neglected, get him into a loose box; take the front off the head-stall, described page 125. Do not (as is the common error in this and in bridling) face the colt, and hold out the head-stall with both hands, as if you _wished_ to frighten him; but keep the head-stall in your left hand, caress the colt with your right hand, and, with your right shoulder to his left shoulder, pa.s.s the right hand under his jaws on to the front part of his head. Bring the left hand up to the right, and, with a hand on each cheek-strap, pa.s.s the top over the ears on to the neck, _if you can_. Fasten the throat-lash tight enough to prevent its being rubbed over the ears. Tie a piece of cord, a yard long, to the off side, D, of the head-stall; pa.s.s the cord through the near side, D. Accustom the colt to see and to be held by this. It is very powerful, as it forms a slip knot round his nose, and prevents his pulling with the top of his head; and it keeps the two cheek-straps back, which otherwise might injure the colt's eyes. When he is used to the short cord, tie a long knotted cord to it. Use gloves when you first take the colt out, and place yourself so that if he bolts you may pull him sideways gradually into a circle.

[Sidenote: The snaffle.]

To get him to lead, place him between you and a fence; keep abreast of his shoulder, and show the stick towards his croupe. When he is subjected to the cord, take a snaffle-bit with a piece of string to each eye (what is called a =T= is best), tie it to the off side, D, hold the nose-band with the right hand, take the snaffle with the left, induce him to open his mouth by pa.s.sing the thumb between his lips on to the _bars_ (part _bare_ of teeth), place the snaffle in his mouth, and tie it to the near side, D. If you have any difficulty, a long string may be used to the near side of the snaffle, and pa.s.sed through the D. If the colt runs back you still hold him with the snaffle under the jaws. When bridled tie a piece of string from eye to eye of the snaffle, so as to hang under the chin; fasten the long cord to this and lead him by it, and use him to be held by this chin-strap. By the common method, he is never held by the mouth till he is mounted.

Next tie a piece of cord round his girthing place, the two ends on the ridge of his back. Make a rein of string and tie it with these ends just tight enough to prevent the colt grazing; you may then pick gra.s.s and give it to him, whistling at the same time. He will soon follow you loose, play by your side, leap fences, and come to your whistle like a dog.

To accustom the colt to be tied by the head, pa.s.s the long cord over a gate, and slacken and tighten as may be required.

Ask leave of the colt to hang your tackle in his hovel; or if he lives in a field, lay it in the hedge to be ready whenever you can spare time "to go for a walk" with him.

For these lessons, and as far as possible for all lessons, the law should be dulcia sunto; but after teaching your child its alphabet in ginger-bread, the time must come when he must go to school.

[Sidenote: Longeing.]

The simplest act of obedience is longeing. In longeing you should walk a circle inside the colt's circle. The long stick should be constantly held up towards his croupe, to keep him on, but ready to be shown towards his head to keep him out. When you stop, and lower the stick, the colt comes in for a piece of carrot. The long cord should never be tight. If the colt's head is pulled in and his croupe driven out of the circle, mental sulks and muscular mischief must ensue. Nothing so surely generates spavins, curbs, and thorough-pins. When skilful, you may make the colt change without stopping, or longe a figure of =8=. This may be done, even without the long cord, by the centripetal force of carrots and the centrifugal force of the stick. When this is done in the open field it looks like mesmerism or magic. When in this way you have made the colt thoroughly to love, honour, and obey you, the saddling, mounting, and riding, follow almost of course.

[Sidenote: Saddling.]

[Sidenote: Mounting.]

Without stirrups, and with only one girth turned over the seat, place the pummel of the saddle on your right shoulder, and your right hand under its cantle, caress the colt with your left hand, and do not attempt to put the saddle on him till your left shoulder touches his.

When girthed tie the string surcingle over the saddle; besides holding the reins, it now prevents the flaps flying up. When used to this, use him to the stirrups. Mount in a loose box with three girths, the head tied loosely to the saddle and a second snaffle bridle. Fill your pockets with tares or hay and feed him from his back. Out of doors mount while the colt is browsing a hedge. Quiet riding must do the rest, the main thing to keep the colt straight on, or to turn him, being the stick shown instantly on either side by the turn of the wrist.

Thus far the _practice_ of colt-breaking; and in this way the colt will be very easily _tackled_: I do not expect so easily to tackle his rider, but I will try.

[Sidenote: Sermon to the colt-breaker.]

[Sidenote: The n.o.blest horse resists the most.]

[Sidenote: Has a _right_ to resist.]

As Lord Pembroke remarks in his admirable treatise, his hand is the best who gets his horse to do what he wishes with the least force, whose indications are so clear that his horse cannot mistake them, and whose gentleness and fearlessness alike induce obedience to them. The n.o.blest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. I say the n.o.blest, because it is ever the n.o.blest among them which rebel the most. For the dominion of man over the horse is an usurped dominion. And in riding a colt, or a restive horse, we should never forget that he has by nature the _right_ to resist; and that, _at least, as far as he can judge_, we have not the right to insist.

When the stag is taken in the toils, the hunter feels neither surprise nor anger at his struggles and alarm; and indeed he would be very unreasonable were he to chastise the poor animal on account of them. But there is no more reason in nature why a horse should submit, without resistance, to be ridden, than the stag to be slain--why the horse should give up his liberty to us, than the stag his life. In both cases our "wish is father to the deed." And if our arrogance insinuates that a bountiful Nature created these animals simply for our service, a.s.suredly bountiful Nature left them in ignorance of the fact. And it is to the sportsman and the colt-breaker that we must apply, if we wish to know whose victims are the most willing. Not to the c.o.c.kney casuist, whose knowledge of the stag is confined to his venison, and who never trusts himself on the horse till it has been "long trained, in shackles, to procession pace." If he did, he would find that the unfettered four-year-old shows precisely the same alarm and resistance to the halter as the stag does to the toils; and in breaking horses, the thing to be aimed at, next to the power of indicating our wishes, is the power of winning obedience to those wishes. These, and these only, are the two things to be aimed at, from the putting the first halter on the colt, to his performance of the pirouette renversee au galop--which is perhaps the most perfect trial and triumph of the most exquisitely finished horsemanship, and in which the horse must exert every faculty of his mind to discover, and every muscle of his body to execute, the wishes of his rider.

[Sidenote: The colt needs no suppling.]

[Sidenote: He wants to know your meaning.]

[Sidenote: And that he must obey.]

It is a vulgar error--an abuse of terms--the mere jargon of jockeyship, to say that the horse needs _suppling_ to perform this, or any other air of the manege, or anything else that man can make him do; all that he wants is to be made acquainted with the wishes of his rider, and inspired with the desire to execute them. For example, among the innumerable antics which I have seen fresh young troopers go through, when being led to and from the farrier's shop, I have seen them perform this very air, the pirouette renversee au galop to the right, round the man who leads them; I have seen them perform the figure perfectly, with the exception that, instead of the right nostril leading, the head and neck have been straight on the diameter of the circle. At the same time detacher l'aiguillette, and mingle courbettes, ballotades, and even cabrioles with it,--combinations which La Broue, the Duke of Newcastle, De la Gueriniere, or Pellier would scarcely dream of. This a horse will do in the gaiety of his heart, and without requiring any suppling; take the same horse into the school, follow him with the whip, and try to _make_ him do it, he will think you a most unreasonable person; he will by no means be able to discover your meaning, and will, if you press him, finish by being exceedingly sulky. Mount him, and try to indicate your wishes to him through the medium of your hands, legs, and whip, or if you prefer the terms, to give him their _aid_ and _support_. I will venture to say that you will be nearer two years than one, before you can get him to do what he has not only done but done for his own delight. In the mean time, if during his two years of _suppling_ you have never given him a false indication or ever forced him, he will be no more stiff than when he first began to be _suppled_. But if, as a million riders out of a million and one would have done, you have been in the constant habit of doing both, the horse will long ago have become as stiff as a piece of wood. Is it to be supposed that the best suppled manege horse is more supple than the colt at the foot of his dam? Can any one who has watched his pranks think so? How often have I been told by a rider to observe how supple his horse's neck had become! That he could now get his horse's head round to his knee, whereas he could not at first accomplish more than to see his horse's eye. If the same horse, loose, wished to scratch his shoulder or his ribs, would he not forthwith do it with his teeth?

When a cabriolet or cart is turned in a narrow street or road, the horse is forced to make half a pirouette, without any questions being asked as to his capabilities or suppleness; and the rein being pulled strongest on one side, the whip applied on the other, the shafts to prevent his turning short, and with evident reason why he cannot go a-head, he sees what is required, and does it without difficulty; but the same horse will not do the same mounted, in the middle of a gra.s.s-field, with nothing but his rider's _aids_ to bias him, or to indicate what is required of him. Why? either because he can't understand your _aids_, or you can't enforce obedience to them: these will be the reasons, not his want of suppleness.

The great thing in horsemanship is to get your horse to be of your party--not only to obey, but to obey willingly. For this reason a young horse cannot be begun with too early, and his lessons cannot be too gradually progressive. The great use of longeing is, not that it supples your horse--it is a farce to suppose that--but that, next to leading, it is the easiest act of obedience which you can exact from him. In this way it is an admirable lesson.

[Sidenote: The leaping-bar.]

Placing the colt between the pillars of the stall is admirable as a lesson of submission and obedience; by degrees he may be even cleaned there. The brush acts as the urging indication; the reins inform him that he is not to advance; the result is that he collects himself to the bit. Here, then, the common theory would make him to be taken up and collected, not between the hands and legs, not "dans la main et dans les talons," but dans the sides of the stall and dans the horse brush. It is precisely the same as putting the horse between the pillars in a manege, which is an admirable explanatory practice to a horse. With the whip in skilful hands, the sides of the stall give infinite advantage over the pillars in the manege; both teach the horse the same lesson, namely, that when urged up to the bit--that is, when urged and retained at the same time--these contradictory indications mean that he is required to collect himself. Anything which facilitates the understanding of this bit of information is of infinite value; for the colt, like the satyr in the fable, is apt to kick against this blowing hot and blowing cold at the same time. Mount the colt, and try these opposite indications; he will do anything but obey them, anything but collect himself. If you insist, he will resist. He will end in overt acts of rebellion, or at least in dogged sulks; and that from not understanding, or not choosing to obey your _aids_, not from want of suppleness. Let art supple the temper and understanding of the colt, and leave nature to supple his limbs. By holding the colt's head against a wall by the chin-strap, he may be made to pa.s.s sideways to either hand by showing him the whip. He should also be taught to rein back; this is best done in a narrow gangway. The leaping-bar is a good exercise of obedience. The bar itself should be only six feet long; the posts which support it should be four feet six inches high; the side-rails thirty feet in length, and they should slope down to three feet; they should rest on the tops of the posts, and be flush with them, and perfectly smooth, so that the long cord may pa.s.s freely over them without catching. The colt should walk half way up the gangway, thence a slow trot. Pa.s.s the reins of the snaffle through the left eye of the snaffle, and fasten the long cord to them. Hold the right rein close to where it pa.s.ses through the eye, it will clasp the lower jaw like a slip-knot and give you great power. All over-fresh horses should be led in this way; without it a horse will pull with the top of his head with force sufficient to beat any man.

Keep the bar low, or even on the ground, as long as the horse is nervous.

The whole affair of colt-breaking is an affair of patience, you cannot have too much forbearance: put off the evil day of force. Forgive him seventy times seven times a-day, and be a.s.sured that what does not come to-day will to-morrow. The grand thing is to get rid of dogged sulks and coltishness; of that wayward, swerving, hesitating gait, which says, "here's my foot, and there's my foot;" or, "there is a lion in the street, I cannot go forth." This is the besetting sin of colts; and this it is which, on the turf, gives so great an advantage to a young horse to have another to _make play_, or _cut out the running_ for him. For this indisposition to go freely forward results as well from their seeing no necessity to give up their will to yours, as from their incapacity to perceive and obey the indications of their rider without swerving, shifting the leg, &c., and additional labour to themselves.

All this is spared to the young horse by the follow-my-leader system.

Everything should be resorted to to avoid alarm on the colt's side and force on the man's, and gradually to induce familiarity and cheerful obedience--to reconcile him to the melancholy change from gregarious liberty to a solitary stall and a state of slavery. I should say that he is the best colt-breaker who soonest inspires him with the animus eundi--who soonest gets him to go freely straight forward--who soonest, and with least force, gets the colt without company five miles along the road from home. Violence never did this yet; but violence increases his reluctance, and makes it last ten times longer. Indeed, it causes the colt to stiffen and defend himself, and this never is got rid of. It is true that by force you may make him your sullen slave, but that is not the object; the object is to make him your willing subject. Above all things, do not be perpetually playing the wolf to him; deal in rewards where it is possible, and in punishment only where it cannot be avoided. Be a.s.sured that the system will _answer_.