The real rassembler consists in collecting the forces of the horse in his centre in order to ease his extremities, and give them up completely to the disposition of the rider. The animal thus finds himself transformed into a kind of balance, of which the rider is the centre-piece. The least touch upon one or other of the extremities, which represent the scales, will immediately send them in the direction we wish. The rider will know that his horse is completely gathered when he feels him ready, as it were, to rise from all four of his legs. The proper position first, and then the use of the spurs, will make this beautiful execution of the gathering easy to both horse and rider; and what splendor, grace and majesty it gives the animal! If we have been obliged at first to use the spurs in pushing this concentration of forces to its farthest limits, the legs will afterwards be sufficient to obtain the gathering necessary for the precision and elevation required in all complicated movements.
Need I recommend discretion in your demands? I think not. If the rider, having reached this stage of his horse's education, cannot comprehend and seize that fineness of touch, that delicacy of process indispensable to the right application of my principles, it will prove him devoid of every feeling of a horseman; nothing I can say can remedy this imperfection of his nature.
CHAPTER VII.
OF THE EMPLOYMENT OF THE FORCES OF THE HORSE BY THE RIDER.
(Continuation.)
Of the gallop.—I have said that, until now, the greater part of the resources of horsemanship have not been understood, and had I need of another proof to support my opinion, I would draw it from the error, the suppositions, the innumerable contradictions that have been heaped together in order to explain so simple a movement as the gallop. What contrary opinions upon the means to employ to make the horse go off with his right foot? It is the support of the rider's right leg which determines the movement, one pretends; it is that of the left leg, says another; it is the equal touch of the two legs, affirms a third; no, some others remark, very seriously, you must let the horse act naturally.
How can the truth be made out in the midst of this conflict of such contrary principles? Besides, they come from such respectable sources; the most of their authors were possessed of titles and dignities which are generally only granted to merit. Have they all been deceived for a hundred and fifty years? This is not possible; for many of them joined to long practice a perfect knowledge of physics, anatomy, mathematics, etc., etc. To doubt such authorities would be as presumptuous as imprudent; it would have been considered a crime of high treason against horsemanship. So the riders kept their ignorance and the horses their bad equilibrium; and if any one succeeded, after two or three years of routine labor, in making certain horses of a privileged organization start with the desired foot, and in making them change feet finally, at a fixed point, the difficulty then was to prevent them from always repeating this movement at the same place.
Thus it is that the most palpable errors gain credit, and often are perpetuated, until there comes a practical mind, gifted with some amount of common sense, who contradicts by practice all the learned theories of its predecessors. They try hard at first to deny the knowledge of the innovator; but the masses who instinctively know the true, and judge from what they see, soon range themselves on his side, turn their backs upon his detractors, and leave them to their solitude and vain pretensions.
To the mass of horsemen I address myself, when I say, either the horse is under the influence of your forces, and entirely submissive to your power, or you are struggling with him. If he gallops off with you, without your being able to modify or direct with certainty his course, it proves that, although subject to a certain extent to your power in thus consenting to carry you about, he, nevertheless, uses his instinctive forces. In this case, there is a perpetual fight going on between you and him, the chances of which depend on the temperament and caprice of the animal, upon the good or bad state of his digestion. Changes of foot, in such a state, can only be obtained by inclining the horse very much to one side, which makes the movement both difficult and ungraceful.