Q. What is the use of the snaffle?
A. The snaffle serves to combat the opposing forces (lateral) of the neck, to make the head precede in all the changes of direction, while the horse is not yet familiarized with the effects of the bit; it serves also to arrange the head and neck in a perfectly straight line.
Q. In order to obtain the ramener, should we make the legs precede the hand or the hand the legs?
A. The hands ought to precede until they have produced the effect of giving great suppleness to the neck (this ought to be practised in the stationary exercises); then come the legs in their turn to combine the hind and fore-parts in the movement. The continual lightness of the horse at all paces will be the result of it.
Q. Ought the legs and the hands to aid one another or act separately?
A. One of these extremities ought always to have the other for auxiliary.
Q. Ought we to leave the horse a long time at the same pace in order to develop his powers?
A. It is useless, since the regularity of movements results from the regularity of the positions; the horse that makes fifty steps at a trot regularly is much further advanced in his education than if he made a thousand in a bad position. We must then attend to his position, that is to say, his lightness.
Q. In what proportions ought we to use the force of the horse?
A. This cannot be defined, since these forces vary in different subjects; but we should be sparing of them, and not expend them without circumspection, particularly during the course of his education. It is on this account that we must, so to say, create for them a reservoir that the horse may not absorb them uselessly, and that the rider may make a profitable and more lasting use of them.