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I30 ORDINARY RIDING.
gravity will be carried to the front a little too much, and the horse will be ready to go beyond the hand. If they act too strongly, too much weight will be put on the hind quarters, and the hocks will be brought too far back. In both cases there will be no rassembler. The fingering of the reins should regulate with absolute precision the distribution of the propulsion.[1] We have to solve this problem at each stride, which is not identical to the preceding one or to the following one. Here is the end we have sought.
We can succeed by work and perseverance to get the horse in hand in a manner which approaches the rassembler, and even to occasionally obtain the rassembler ; but very few riders can keep up the rassembler by a scientific fingering of the reins.[2]
In order that the rider may properly feel his horse — that is to say, when the rassembler is perfect — the harmony and union between him and his animal should be such that the force of propulsion and the effects of the whole should be transmitted without intermission or interruption.
The propulsion and the effects which the whole sends from the rider to the horse, and from the horse to the rider, are like an elastic ball. The spur, so to speak, goes to seek for this ball in the hind legs of the horse, and makes it come up close to the heels of the rider, whence, passing by the seat, it ascends to the withers, follows the upper part of the neck to the poll, falls into the mouth, where the hands receive it, and, following the lower part of the neck, it returns to its starting point, where it is picked up and sent on again by the legs. Therefore, this ball continually goes round a circuit when the horse is rassemblé'd. To make this comparison perfectly exact, we should say that it is a football which leaves the legs and arrives at the mouth, and a billiard ball which comes back. ↩︎
It is impossible to obtain and preserve a good rassembler unless the horse has been kept perfectly straight during his course of breaking. If we do not succeed in holding the animal in this straight line, which begins at the poll and finishes at the tail, the horse will escape being rassemblé'd. If any part deviates — haunches, shoulders, or jaw yielding laterally, instead of yielding in a straight line — the result will be spoiled propulsion, and without complete propulsion there can be no rassembler.
Being able to feel that the horse is straight is the first manifestation of equestrian tact. The moment the slightest deviation is perceived, the legs send the hind-quarters to each other, whilst the effects of the hand, which combine with the effects of the legs, straighten the forehand. At this moment the rider succeeds in getting the equestrian feeling (equestrian tact) by the more or less fine perception of the successive positions of the forehand and hind quarters, until the animal is perfectly straight. ↩︎