38 ORDINARY RIDING. 



body, my wish being to give him confidence. If I were 

 to make a step forward, he would immediately spring back, 

 which result would be the opposite to that which I wished 

 to obtain. If nothing has frightened him while he is coming 

 to me, and if my pats on his neck and my voice have shown 

 him that he need not fear my presence, he will soon gain 

 confidence, and will of himself try to come to me, and all the 

 more readily when he finds that tranquility is to be obtained 

 only at the centre of the school. He ought to have sufficient 

 confidence to come up to the breaker without fear, but he 

 should do so only at a given signal. Our object is to make 

 him understand this signal without the use of the lunging 

 rein, which wall be discontinued later on. 



I use the driving whip to make the horse come up to me 

 in obedience to my order, and I give him light and repeated 

 flicks on the buttock, ribs, or shoulder, while always seeking to 

 block the side from which he tries to escape. In order to 

 make the animal go forward, I sometimes touch him on the 

 breast, in which case his first movement is to run back ; but 

 I continue to hold him tightly with the lunging rein, and 

 while preventing him from running back, I call out '' whoa ! " 



If he runs back, he does so because he is afraid of the 

 whip. An unbroken horse does not fly from a sting, flick, or 

 prod ; on the contrary, he goes up to it and lies against it. 



We shall see further on that the effect obtained on a 

 mounted horse by the pressure of the leg or by a touch of the 

 spur is due solely to education. A horse in a state of nature 

 will do the very opposite to what he will do when broken. 

 For instance, stung on the right flank by a fly, he will bring 

 himself round to the right, until he meets some object against 

 which he can rub himself or even lie upon. 



The sight of the driving whip makes him run away from it, 

 but its touch makes him go forward. As soon as the tension 

 of the lunging rein has shown him that he cannot get away 



