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.
[S] The use of the spurs.
_Fifth lesson. Fifteen days of work._--These last fifteen days will be
occupied in assuring the perfect execution of all the preceding work,
and in perfecting the pace of the gallop until we can execute easily
changes of direction, changes of feet at every step, and passaging. We
can then exercise the horse at leaping the bar and at the _piaffer_.
Thus in two months, and upon any horse, we will have accomplished a work
that formerly required years, and then often gave incomplete results.
And I repeat, however insufficient so short a space of time may appear,
it will produce the effect I promise, if you follow exactly all my
directions. I have demonstrated this upon a hundred different occasions,
and many of my pupils are able to prove it as well as myself.
In establishing the above order of work, be it well understood that I
found myself on the dispositions of horses in general. A horseman of any
tact will soon understand the modifications that he ought to make in
their application, according to the particular nature of his pupil. Such
a horse, for example, will require more or less persistence in the
flexions; another one in the backing; this one, dull and apathetic, will
require the use of the spurs before the time I have indicated. All this
is an affair of intelligence; it would be to insult my readers not to
suppose them capable of supplying to the details what it is elsewhere
impossible to particularize. You can readily understand that there are
irritable, ill-disposed horses, whose defective dispositions have been
made worse by previous bad management. With such subjects it is
necessary to put more persistence into the supplings and the walk. In
every case, whatever the slight modifications that the difference in the
dispositions of the subjects render necessary, I persist in saying that
there are no horses whose education ought not to be completed by my
method in the space I designate. I mean here, that this time is
sufficient to give the forces of the horse the fitness necessary for
executing all the movements; the finish of education depends finally on
the nicety of touch of the rider. In fact, my method has the advantages
of recognizing no limits to the progress of equitation, and there is no
performance _equestrianly_ possible that a horseman who understands
properly applying my principles cannot make his horse execute. I am
about to give a convincing proof in support of this assertion, by
explaining the sixteen new figures of the _manege_ that I have added to
the collection of the old masters.