LUNGING 137 



a horse has been punished in this manner, it would be un- 

 reasonable to expect that when mounted, he would intelli- 

 gently bear and answer the pressure of the heel, whip or ash 

 plant, if his rider wanted him to turn on his fore-hand while 

 opening a gate out hunting, for instance. 



Probably not more than 2 or 3 per cent, of these 

 steppe remounts are really bad to handle ; although a large 

 number of them are more or less shy of being touched about 

 the head, as I have already said. The coaxing system 

 proves tedious ; for little progress is made in the education 

 of the young ones during the ten or eleven months they are 

 at the cadres, beyond getting them quiet to ride ; and, as I 

 have reason to infer, if a horse is bad to start with, he 

 generally continues so for the remainder of his military 

 career. The fact of a horse being quiet with one man and 

 vicious with everyone else, appears to be accepted by 

 Russian cavalrymen as a dispensation of Providence which 

 has to be borne with becoming resignation. 



I have been told by several officers at the cadres that the 

 long time occupied by their system of breaking, often proves 

 inconvenient for military purposes, in the not unfrequently 

 recurring event of remounts being required for service two 

 or three months after their admission into the cadres. 



The one-rein or one-rope system of lunging causes a 

 horse to go in badly-balanced style, on account of control 

 being obtained solely by the mouth, and that only in a 

 narrowly limited direction. By it, the breaker is impaled on 

 the horns of a dilemma. If he works the horse in the usual 

 way, the animal's head will be pulled unduly inwards and 

 the hind-quarters will be carried too much outwards, with 

 the result that the hind feet will describe a circle outside 

 that made by the fore feet, instead of there being only one 

 track, and consequently the horse will be too heavy in front. 

 If, to obviate the occurrence of these two concentric circles of 

 18 



