Before preparing to take the leap, the rider should hold himself sufficiently firm to prevent his body preceding the motion of the horse. His loins should be supple, his buttocks well fixed to the saddle, so that he may experience no shock nor violent reaction. His thighs and legs exactly enveloping the body and sides of the horse will give him a power always opportune and infallible. The hand in its natural position will feel the horse's mouth in order to judge of the effects of impulsion. It is in this position that the rider should conduct the horse towards the obstacle; if he comes up to it with the same freedom of pace, a light opposition of the legs and hand will facilitate the elevation of the fore-hand, and the bound of the posterior extremity. As soon as the horse is raised, the hand ceases its effect, to be again sustained when the fore legs touch the ground, and to prevent them giving way under the weight of the body.
We should content ourselves with executing a few leaps in accordance with the horse's powers, and, above all, avoid pushing bravado to the point of wishing to force the animal to clear obstacles that are beyond his powers. I have known very good leapers that people have succeeded in thus disgusting forever, so that no efforts could induce them to clear things only half the height of those that at first they leaped with ease.
Of the piaffer.[R]—Until now, horsemen have maintained that the nature of each horse permits of only a limited number of movements, and that if there are some that can be brought to execute a piaffer high and elegant, or low and precipitate, there are a great number of them to whom this exercise is for ever interdicted. Their construction, they say, is opposed to it; it is then nature that has so willed it; ought we not to bow before this supreme arbiter, and respect its decrees?
This opinion is undoubtedly convenient for justifying its own ignorance, but it is none the less false. We can bring all horses to piaffer, and I will prove that in this particularly, without reforming the work of nature, without deranging the formation of the bones, or that of the muscles of the animal, we can remedy the consequences of its physical imperfections, and change the vicious disposition occasioned by faulty construction. There is no doubt that the horse whose forces and weight are collected in one of his extremities will be unfit to execute the elegant cadence of the piaffer. But a graduated exercise, the completion of which is the rassembler, soon allows us to remedy such an inconvenience. We can now reunite all these forces in their true centre of gravity, and the horse that bears the rassembler perfectly has all the necessary qualifications for the piaffer.
For the piaffer to be regular and graceful, it is necessary that the horse's legs, moved diagonally, rise together and fall in the same way upon the ground at as long intervals as possible. The animal ought not to bear more upon the hand than upon the legs of the rider, that his equilibrium may present the perfection of that balance of which I have spoken in another place. When the centre of the forces is thus disposed in the middle of the body, and when the rassembler is perfect, it is sufficient, in order to induce a commencement of piaffer, to communicate to the horse with the legs a vibration at first slight, but often repeated. By vibration I mean an invigoration of forces, of which the rider ought always to be the agent.
After this first result, the horse will be put at a walk, and the rider's legs gradually brought close, will give the animal a slight increase of action. Then, but only then, the hand will sustain itself in time with the legs, and at the same intervals, in order that these two motive powers, acting conjointly, may keep up a succession of imperceptible movements, and produce a slight contraction which will spread itself over the whole body of the horse. This reiterated activity will give the extremities a first mobility, which at the beginning will be far from regular, since the increase of action that this new exercise makes necessary will for the moment break the harmonious uniformity of the forces. But this general action is necessary in order to obtain even an irregular mobility, for without it the movement would be disorderly, and there would be a want of harmony among the different springs. We will content ourselves, for the first few days, with a commencement of mobility of the extremities, being careful to stop each time that the horse raises or puts down his feet, without advancing them too much, in order to caress him, and speak to him, and thus calm the invigoration that a demand, the object of which he does not understand, must cause in him. Nevertheless, these caresses should be employed with discernment, and when the horse has done well, for if badly applied they would be rather injurious than useful. The fit time for ceasing with the hands and legs is more important still; it demands all the rider's attention.
The mobility of the legs once obtained, we can commence to regulate it, and fix the intervals of the cadence. Here again, I seek in vain to indicate with the pen the degree of delicacy necessary in the rider's proceedings, since his motions ought to be answered by the horse with an exactness and à propos that is unequaled. It is by the alternated support of the two legs that he will succeed in prolonging the lateral balancings of the horse's body, in such way as to keep him longer on one side or the other. He will seize the moment when the horse prepares to rest his fore leg on the ground, to make the pressure of his own leg felt on the same side, and add to the inclination of the animal in the same direction. If this time is well seized, the horse will balance himself slowly, and the cadence will acquire that elevation so fit to bring out all its elegance and all its majesty. These times of the legs are difficult, and require great practice; but their results are too splendid for the rider not to strive to seize the light variations of them.
The precipitate movement of the rider's legs accelerates also the piaffer. It is he, then, who regulates at will the greater or less degree of quickness of the cadence. The performance of the piaffer is not elegant and perfect until the horse performs it without repugnance, which will always be the case when the forces are kept together, and the position is suitable to the demands of the movement. It is urgent, then, to be well acquainted with the amount of force necessary for the performance of the piaffer, so as not to overdo it. We should, above all, be careful to keep the horse rassemblé, which, of itself, will induce the movement without effort.