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making the change of leg so easy, that the horse will often do it on his own account, when prompted merely by the preparations to which he has been submitted. In fact, when we stop him on one leg, the " aids " ought to slightly prepare him to start off on the other leg.
Whenever I have had time to prepare a horse, I have never failed to make him change his leg at the first attempt. Whatever kind of horse he may be, he will always do one change correctly, after having failed to do several. We should then get off, pat him on the neck, and send him back to his stable. At the following lesson we ought to repeat and prolong the same lesson, until the animal changes easily from the near fore to the off fore. Having then turned round, so as to go to the left, we should, in the same way, make him change from the off fore to the near fore.
We should always avoid making him change at the same place, as that would always make him want to change when he passes it. It would therefore become impossible to make him change as we wish, because our will would be subordinated to his.[1]
When I have got the horse to readily change from the outward to the inward leg in the corners, I put him to do the same work on a straight line.
The change of leg should be required only at a certain period of the stride, when it is easiest for the horse to do. As
I have said that in all things horses acquire habits with great facility. Therefore, during breaking, we should most carefully avoid giving him bench-marks (if I may use the term), whether by putting him to the same work at the same place, or by repeating different exercises in the same order. This advice is, I think, all the more important, because the majority of riding masters persistently give bench-marks to their horses, which makes the breaking apparently more easy. Although the horse by routine does his work at a given moment, at certain spots, and according to a prearranged programme, he is not properly trained, because, so far from being submissive to the will of his rider, the rider has to accommodate himself to the habits of the animal. Consequently the horse is habituated, or, as we may say, " routined," but he is not broken in. ↩︎