CHAPTER VIII.
DIVISION OF THE WORK.
I have developed all the means to be employed in completing the horse's education; it remains for me to say how the horseman ought to divide his work, in order to connect the different exercises and pass by degrees from the simple to the complicated.
Two months of work, consisting of two lessons a day of a half hour each—that is to say, one hundred and twenty lessons—will be amply sufficient to bring the greenest horse to perform regularly all the preceding exercises. I hold to two short lessons a day, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon; they are necessary to obtain good results.
We disgust a young horse by keeping him too long at exercises that fatigue him, the more so as his intelligence is less prepared to understand what we wish to demand of him. On the other hand, an interval of twenty-four hours is too long, in my opinion, for the animal to remember the next day what he had comprehended the day before.
The general work will be divided into five series or lessons, distributed in the following order:
First lesson. Eight days of work.—The first twenty minutes of this lesson will be devoted to the stationary exercise for the flexions of the jaw and neck; the rider first on foot, and then on horseback, will follow the progression I have previously indicated. During the last ten minutes, he will make the horse go forward at a walk without trying to animate him, but applying himself all the while to keeping his head in the position of ramener. He will content himself with executing a single change of hand, in order to go as well to the right hand as to the left. The fourth or fifth day, the rider, before putting his horse in motion, will make him commence some slight flexions of the croup.
Second lesson. Ten days of work.—The first fifteen minutes will be occupied in the stationary supplings, comprising the flexions of the croup performed more completely than in the preceding lesson; then will begin the backing. We will devote the other half of the lesson to the moving straight ahead, once or twice taking the trot at a very moderate pace. The rider during this second part of the work, without ceasing to pay attention to the ramener, will yet commence light oppositions of hands and legs, in order to prepare the horse to bear the combined effects, and to give regularity to his paces. We will also commence the changes of direction at a walk, while preserving the ramener, and being careful to make the head and neck always go first.
Third lesson. Twelve days of work.—Six or eight minutes only will at first be occupied in the stationary flexions; those of the hind-parts should be pushed to the completion of the reversed pirouettes. We will continue by the backing; then all the rest of the lesson will be devoted to perfecting the walk and the trot, commencing at this latter pace the changes of direction. The rider will often stop the horse, and continue to watch attentively the ramener during the changes of pace or direction. He will also commence the exercise de deux pistes at a walk, as well as the rotation of the shoulders around the haunches.
Fourth lesson. Fifteen days of work.—After five minutes being devoted to the stationary supplings, the rider will first repeat all the work of the preceding lessons; he will commence, with a steady foot, the attaques,[S] in order to confirm the ramener and prepare the rassembler. He will renew the attaques while in motion, and when the horse bears them patiently, he will commence the gallop. He will content himself in the commencement with executing four or five lopes only before resuming the walk, and then start again with a different foot, unless the horse requires being exercised more often on one foot than the other. In passing from the gallop to the walk, we should watch with care that the horse resumes this latter pace as quickly as possible without taking short steps on a trot, all the while keeping the head and neck light. He will only be exercised at the gallop at the end of each lesson.