HOW TO RENDER HORSES OBEDIENT. 293 



been just said, that this instrument may be used with 

 advantage by those who wish to train on the English 

 system. What we have here given is merely a sketch 

 of so much of the school system as suffices to bring 

 horses into obedience — in fact, the A B C of the method 

 — as it would lead us altogether beyond the limits we 

 have proposed to ourselves to go further than this into 

 the detail of manege-riding, even if we felt ourselves 

 competent to do so, which is far from being the case. 

 Our object was to show by what means, within almost 

 every rider's reach, perfect control may be obtained 

 over the horse's head, neck, and hind legs, and this 

 because it is by the aid of these members of its body, 

 especially the last-named ones, that the vicious or in- 

 subordinate horse is enabled to defy its rider. 



Up to the point at which we have now arrived it 

 will have been most advisable to use a snaffle, either 

 alone or in combination with Seeger's running-rein, 

 which enables us, whilst we lift the horse's neck and 

 head by the upward and backward pull on the snaffle- 

 reins, to limit exactly the degree to which this eleva- 

 tion takes place. When the neck, and with it the 

 head, have been got into the desired position — which 

 is, we repeat, always that in which the horse trots per- 

 fectly "clean" and in "obedience" — the next step is to 

 get the head into its proper position with regard to the 

 neck, and this is done by means of the curbed bit. 



What sort of bit should be selected, and how it 

 ought to be put into the horse's mouth, has been 

 already fully explained, and all that will be further 

 necessary is to accustom the horse gradually to this in 

 precisely the way pointed out already for getting it to 

 accept other limitations of its freedom. If all this be 



