WALKING PACE.
I may here say that, despite the directions which I have taken pains to give on the subject of holding reins I adhere to the belief that so long as they are held flat and smooth, there need not really be any fixed rule about the handling of them. If elbows, shoulders, and wrists are in proper position, it matters comparatively little how fingers may be held—and beginners are, as a rule, a great deal too much worried and puzzled about a matter which generally simplifies itself according as a knowledge of more important things is acquired. At the same time, there is with this, as with everything else, a right and a wrong side to the subject; and in order to avoid the wrong, it will perhaps be as well to adopt the orthodox right method from the very beginning. There is, however, nothing at all wrong in occasionally moving the reins about and changing them from one hand to the other. All good riders do it, and it is vastly better than adopting the stiff, set style which would-be fine riders sometimes affect: namely, placing the hands in one position when setting out, and scarcely ever altering them from it. A good horsewoman will sedulously avoid everything that is stiff or ungraceful, and will move about in her saddle with as much pliant ease as though seated at home in an easy chair. The unsightly rigidity observable about the figures and demeanour of some lady-riders—especially those whose “teaching” has been too finely drawn—is certainly not a thing to be copied or admired.
Having now discussed the subject of reins, we come to consider the “Voice” as a means of controlling and managing the horse.
I have always considered the effect and power of the voice as second only in usefulness to those of the bridle. Horses are intelligent and sensitive beyond what most persons can be induced to think or believe. I know to a certainty that they not only listen to, and are influenced by, every sound that issues from their riders’ lips, but absolutely gather his meaning and desires from the various inflexions of his voice. I know that they love their masters and mistresses, and look to them for teaching, just as dependent children ask you what it is that you wish them to do. There is something inexpressibly beautiful in this loving intelligence on the part of animals—this sympathy between horse and rider, which, in a former chapter, I strove to say something about. Horses are in reality the very noblest of God’s created things—excepting, of course, man as he ought to be. They have, so far as their endowments permit, all the attributes that go to make the human character lovable and good, supplemented by a rare fidelity, such as is unhappily seldom met with among those who are fashioned in the Creator’s own image. I have read, and been told a great deal, about horses that were “obstinate brutes,” and “wicked devils,” and “outrageous beasts,” and everything else that was hateful and bad—and have listened with a bursting and indignant heart to accounts of thrashings, and starvings, and spurrings, and mouth-burnings, and other wickednesses, which have made me feel how infinitely superior was the so-called brute creation to that which it is made to serve. I confess that it has not been my lot to come across any specimens of this much-talked-of vicious sort, excepting in one or two rare instances, where I knew that vice had been engendered by bad and cruel treatment. I have no doubt that horses, like human beings, are sometimes born with evil natures—sometimes, but not very often. I have not met with any of them, and the few with whom I have ever had trouble have invariably been those whom wanton cruelty or rank injustice had in the first instance spoilt. There are very few horses indeed—even the most unruly—that cannot be tamed, or made amenable and obedient, by the hands and voice of a kind and judicious trainer, and for this sort of work women are especially fitted. I mean, of course, women of courage and mind; not such as would scream at sight of a spider, or go into fits if a mouse chanced to cross the floor. A woman’s voice carries great power along with it, and the touch of her light firm hands can effect things at which a man’s would utterly fail. Gentleness goes ever in advance of force, and leading is preferable to driving. Even if you have to scold, or whip, there is a way of doing both that is temperate and wise, and that will never create ill-will between you and your horse. Fight an animal, and he will fight you in return; coax him by the gentleness of your action and the sound of your voice, and he will be pretty certain to yield. It is just the difference between “lead” and “drive.” Such, at least, has been my experience.
I saw a horse some time ago in the west of Ireland, caged like a wild beast, and fed with a pitchfork through the bars of his door. Nobody would go near him, he bore such a bad name, and the appellation his groom bestowed upon him—“A tattherin’ divil!”—was certainly more expressive than refined. I offered to buy him; his owner said I might have him for nothing; but I gave what I thought fair, and took the horse home. The creature was wild from savage treatment. He had known nothing but blows and threats, and angry epithets: things that he had learned to understand only too well, and was, seemingly ever expectant of, and waiting for. I taught him something different—and how?—by the simple power of my voice. It is not a particularly musical one, by any means, except in the ears of animals, but to one of these it has never yet uttered an angry word,—and the horse came to know it, and to listen for it, and to neigh at the sound of it, and by-and-by we got to understand one another quite well, and the great, big, foolish old head, all defaced and disfigured as it was by hard knocks and bad usage, used to rest lovingly upon my shoulder, while I stroked the ears that in former days had so often been laid back in angry vindictiveness against a harsh and cruel task-master. “He’ll take the nose off your face some day, the treacherous brute!” an ex-attendant upon my new pet once said to me. But, needless to say, it was a libel: my nose is still intact. The horse learned to love me, and to caress and obey from that feeling. I believe he would have died for me. When I hunted him he jumped the biggest places at a word from my lips. Without whip, curb, or spur I rode him for many a day, over the difficult Ward country, and he never once played me a shabby trick. Poor fellow! He had not a particle of beauty about him; indeed, I think he was ridiculously ugly, in all save prejudiced eyes; but he had an honest heart, one that would have broken rather than have grieved or disobeyed his owner; and when I had to shoot him (he broke his back, leaping a drain with a friend to whom I had unfortunately lent him for a day’s schooling), he turned such an eye upon me as I cannot to this day think of without a lump in my throat that is very seldom there.
The voice, as an instigator and soother, is alike powerful with the horse, if we only know how to use it; and being so, it is a pity that it should ever be employed for any other purpose than that which is good. Teach your horse from the beginning to know the sound of your voice—the various tones which signify approval, warning, encouragement, and reproof—and by them you can teach him to obey you, just as you can with the reins.
I do not altogether approve of speaking to strange horses when mounted upon them. Were I, for instance, to borrow a hunter for a day’s outing, I don’t think I should be inclined to talk much to him; I should fear that he might not understand me, and that mischief might consequently ensue. I have, in fact, seen men get tremendous falls in the hunting field through shouting at hired mounts, just when they were rising at their fences—frightening the animals out of their wits by so doing, and throwing them completely off their balance.
With your own horses, however, it ought to be quite a different thing. You should so accustom them to the sound of your voice that, no matter how it may be raised, it shall have no startling effect upon them. An intelligent animal will soon come to know and judge of your meaning by the tone in which you speak to him, and will learn his own name, too, marvellously quickly, if frequently called by it, a thing that will be a great aid to you in training him. He will very soon also comprehend the meaning of such terms, as “Trot,” “Canter,” “Stand,” “Walk,” and so forth, and will ere long obey every mandate that comes directly and firmly from your lips.
“Hi, over!” is, for instance, a capital incentive for making a horse fly his fences without hanging at them,—but you must never trade upon an animal’s intelligence for the purpose of fooling him, or showing off. I once knew a man who boasted that by simply saying “go!” he could make his mare jump fifteen feet of an ordinary field, and he tried it twice or thrice for the benefit of unbelieving acquaintances; but, when next he took the animal out to hunt, and raced her at a brook, with the hitherto magic word screamed loudly in her ear, it proved to be a very decided case of “go,” and “go in” also, for she just planted her toes on the brink of it, and, stopping short, sent her over-confident rider head foremost into the water.