However, a lump of sugar gave the poor fellow more confidence, and, avoiding all brusque movements, I went on to give him the first lesson of the Baucher series, viz., To Come to the Whip.
It is encouraging for beginners that this lesson, while producing conspicuous results, is in most cases very easy. In less than half an hour my audience was not a little surprised to see Sambo come to me at the slightest motion of the whip, and follow me about with neck arched, ears pricked up, and eyes lustrous with the unwonted pleasure of comprehending and voluntarily carrying out his master’s wishes.
COMING TO THE WHIP.
“Well, that’s very pretty,” said the farmer; “but what’s the good of it?”
This criticism, it may be remarked, he continued to repeat at every step in the horse’s education. He did not “see the good” of a double bridle with two bits. He did not see the good of teaching the horse to relax the muscles of his jaw and to hold the bit lightly in the mouth. He did not see the good of suppling the various muscles of the neck, on which, nevertheless, depend to a surprising degree the balance of the whole body and the easy motion of the limbs. In fact, he maintained his attitude of amused and good-natured incredulity until one day, after about three weeks, I rode Sambo into the lawn, his neck arched and tail displayed, and, with the reins hanging on my little finger, made him cut circles and figure eights of all sizes at a spanking trot.
Then my good farmer gave up, and said he really would hardly have believed it could be the same horse. What is more, he took off his own driving horses “the overdrawn check-reins” by which he had been hauling their noses up into as near a horizontal line as possible, and allowed them to carry their heads in a more natural manner.
The afternoon of his first lesson Sambo was put in double harness for a drive of ten or twelve miles, during which he annoyed me excessively by his restless dancing and fretting, so that next morning I expected to have to begin all over again; but, to my satisfaction, he had forgotten nothing, and came towards me at the first motion of the whip, so that I passed on to the Flexions de la Mâchoire, which we translate as the suppling of the muscles of the jaw. Here I came upon my first difficulty, and it lasted me several days. It was, however, the only serious one in my whole course, and from subsequent experience I am satisfied that my own awkwardness and disposition to compel obedience by main force were the principal causes of it.
However, success soon rewarded my perseverance, and I had the satisfaction of feeling the iron grip of the bit relax, and seeing the nose brought in and the face assume a perpendicular position.