Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece / or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding

by George Greenwood

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 grass 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, pass 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.

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.

Saddling. 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. Mounting. 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.

Sermon to the colt-breaker. 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 noblest animal will obey such a rider, as surely as he will disregard the poltroon, or rebel against the savage. The noblest horse resists the most. I say the noblest, because it is ever the noblest 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 Has a right to resist.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, assuredly 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 cockney 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 renversée 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.

The colt needs no suppling. 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 manége, or anything else that man can make him do;
He wants to know your meaning. all that he wants is to be made acquainted with the wishes of his rider, and inspired with the desire to execute them.
And that he must obey. 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 renversée 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 détacher l’aiguillette, and mingle courbettes, ballotades, and even cabrioles with it,—combinations which La Broue, the Duke of Newcastle, De la Guerinière, 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 manége 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?