86 SEATS AND SADDLES. 



Every practical rider must have observed that with 

 certain horses there is a difficulty, in starting to trot, 

 in the accommodation of the rider's rise in the stirrups 

 to the first movements : he will have to feel his way, 

 as it were, to the proper leg, and perhaps be obliged 

 to sit out two or three shakes before he can get at it ; 

 for many horses trot unequally — that is, take a longer 

 stride with one pair of legs than with the other. The 

 rider should observe this in difficult cases, and try to 

 find out, which he soon can, with which hind leg he 

 should rise or fall : men who have this instinct are 

 able to trot horses that perfectly good riders fail with,-- 



Lieutenant-Colonel von Oeynhausen tells us* that 

 the veterinary surgeon Trager, of the famous stud at > 

 Trakehnen, has observed that the near hind and off 

 fore legs of most horses are stronger than the other 

 two : and he attributes some well-laiown but hitherto 

 seemingly inexplicable facts in connection with horses 

 to this ch'cumstance — as, for instance, that they natu- 

 rally prefer, in cantering and galloping, to lead with 

 the near leg, the weight being then supported by the 

 two strongest limbs (near hind, off fore) ; that spavin 

 occurs more frequently on the off than the near side ; 

 and that horses in wheeling about through restiveness 



is occasioned in 'propelling the horse's and rider's weights : and 

 secondly, what we object to so much in the exaggeration of the 

 English system of rising in the stirrups when trotting, and trans- 

 ferring the weight alternately from rear to front, and vice versa, 

 is precisely that one set of muscles is constantly overburdened, 

 whilst another set is unduly spared ; whereas, by placing the 

 rider permanently in the centre, his weight is alternately pro- 

 pelled by the diagonal action of each pair of legs. 



* B. von Oeynhausen, K.K. Oberst-lieutenant, etc, ; 'Der 

 Pferdeliebhaber' (Vienna, 1865), at p. 162 — a book that cannot 

 be too highly recommended. 



