420 



HORSEMANSHIP. 



legs from swinging loosely. There should be 

 but one leg motion below the knees in rising to 

 the trot, and that is an upward and downward 

 ankle motion. The heels should be kept well 

 down. The very best practice for becoming a 

 good rider is to practice bareback, or with a stir- 

 rupless saddle, wearing spurs. When one can 

 ride a horse without stirrups and with spurs 

 to walk, to trot, and to canter, and over moderate 

 jumps he may consider himself rather more 

 than a fair rider. And if any one has an idea 

 that horseback riding is not very much of an ex- 

 ercise, he should try it without the stirrups and 

 with the spurs. 



It is a mistake to suppose that to become a 

 really good horseman a man has simply to take 

 a docile animal, saddle him and bridle him, and 

 practice riding at a gallop, up hill and down hill, 

 in some lonely lane in Canada or in Mexico. 



The way to learn to ride is to go to the best 

 riding school and practice diligently under the 

 best masters obtainable ; and it is the only way 

 to become a finished and thorough horseman 

 unless one expects to be able to live and practice 

 horsemanship for a hundred years. The riding 

 schools of the present day are provided with 

 corps of riding masters whose knowledge is 

 practically the experience of centuries. Any 

 man who has ever ridden in the schools knows 

 that a riding ring is a large square, or oblong 

 space with a tan-bark floor. To ride in this 

 ring, one's horse must be almost constantly on 

 the turn. There are two things about negotiat- 

 ing these turns which your horse will feel and 

 you will feel if you do not do them properly ev- 

 ery time. Most riding is done on the trot or the 

 canter. There are two ways in which a horse 

 can make a turn while on the canter ; they are 

 called when he is true and when he is false the 

 right way and the wrong way. When a horse 

 canters or gallops it may be noticed by the most 

 casual observer that he has one side of his mov- 

 able anatomy of his progressive forces in what 

 is called the " lead." He is either on the right 

 lead or on the left lead, as the legs on the right 

 side or on the left side take the longer or the 

 quicker steps. If any horse, no matter how 

 skillful and how docile he may be, attempts to 

 canter or gallop about a turn when he is " false " 

 he is liable to fall, possibly causing his rider se- 

 vere, if not fatal injury ; and, too, if the horse is 

 false in going about a turn, it is much more diffi- 

 cult for him to recover from the effect of any 

 slip, or the false step, or mistake, which the 

 most sagacious or cautious animal is likely to 

 make. How many years of uninstructed prac- 

 tice would make a beginner appreciate or under- 

 stand this proved fact of experience the true 

 and the false in the horse's leading foot to canter 

 or gallop. Then with the trot: A man who 

 learned to ride by himself might ride all his life 

 before he found out the difference it would make 

 to his horse if he were capable of rising to the 

 different diagonals of the trot. A skillful horse- 

 man when out with a horse for a long journey 

 knows enough to change to the animal's gait ev- 

 ery now and then, making a vast difference in 

 the wear and tear and fatigue of both the steed 

 and himself. There is a great difference in this 

 trot, too, when frequent turns are made, as in 

 the ring of a riding school. If a man is going 



around a ring to the right, he should rise on 

 what is called the right biped that is, the horse 

 should throw him up as the animal's left hind 

 leg steps forward and the right foreleg comes to 

 the ground. In trotting around a ring and 

 turning to the left all the time, the rider should 

 be thrown up by the horse's right hind leg at 

 just the moment that the horse's left foreleg 

 comes down. In cantering or galloping about 

 the ring, the side to the turn that is, left side 

 for left turn, right side for right turn should 

 be taking the longer steps, or leading. Vol- 

 umes might be written, not on the finesse, but 

 on the ordinary common, every-day requirements 

 of a horseman or horsewoman the greatest is 

 control. It is not enough to get your horse to 

 go from one place to another. A stable boy, 

 without saddle or bridle, can do that. The horse- 

 man or the horsewoman has the animal always 

 and absolutely at disposal. In getting this con- 

 trol the science comes in. Any child knows 

 that if you pull a horse's left rein he ought to 

 go to the left, and vice versa ; but the control of 

 a trained saddle horse is something above and 

 beyond such simple things as these. 



In speaking of a trained saddle horse, we do 

 not mean a high-school saddle horse. To the 

 high-school saddle horse the rider's very thoughts 

 seem to be known by some involuntary pressure. 

 But an ordinary saddle horse is capable of being 

 controlled to an almost unbelievable extent ; and 

 here, again, the folly of attempting to learn 

 horsemanship without instruction is made clear. 

 How many years might a man practice alone in 

 the saddle before he found out that by holding 

 a horse's head steadily and touching him with 

 the left heel the animal can be made to step side- 

 wise to the right for a block or half a mile? 

 And how much longer would it be necessary for 

 such a rider to practice before he learned that a 

 horse receives totally different impressions from 

 being touched with the heel or spur in places less 

 than six inches apart 1 



Horsemen divide the animal into three parts 

 the forehand or head and shoulders, the center 

 piece or body, and the crup or hind part. It is 

 wonderful what advantage has been taken of 

 little bits of knowledge gleaned here and there 

 by thousands of riders in hundreds of years, un- 

 der thousands of different circumstances, and all 

 turned to account in modern horsemanship. 



The growth of horsemanship in New York 

 city and vicinity can not be better illustrated 

 than by the hundreds of men and women who 

 may be seen on the bridle paths of Central Park 

 and on the Riverside drive every day, except by 

 the new and improved riding schools which have 

 become popular institutions. Though least heard 

 of, foremost among the riding establishments of 

 New York city should be mentioned the Rid- 

 ing Club, which has it headquarters at Madison 

 Avenue and Fifty-eighth Street. There are 500 

 ladies and gentlemen who claim membership in 

 this body, and about 400 horses are stabled here 

 all the time. Among the riding academies is 

 that of the Cohn Brothers, the Central Park Rid- 

 ing Academy, at Seventh Avenue and Fifty- 

 eighth and Fifty-ninth streets, one of the oldest 

 and most popular schools in America, which has 

 turned out more good riders than any other es- 

 tablishment in New York, and which is doing 



