320 RESTIVENESS : ITS PREVENTION AND CURE. 



of a backing or bucking horse may end in rearing ; 

 but bringing a remount, or sometimes even an old horse, 

 into the company of other horses, and tlien trying to 

 get it away against its will, will often do the same ; or 

 wanting to force a horse over a jump it does not like, 

 *i:c., &c. Now, let us see what a horse does with itself 

 immediately before it actually does rear up. The rider 

 is perhaps just congratulating himself how nicely he is 

 getting along, when all of a sudden he feels as if the 

 horse had collapsed under him ; his seat is "nowhere;" 

 its head or mouth has shrunk away from the feeling on 

 the mouthpiece, and it has got its legs under its body, 

 and is come to a dead stand-still — the rider usually, 

 unless his seat be correct, falling forward with his 

 body, which of course makes matters worse. Then 

 most riders will give a great dig with their heels or 

 spurs just anywhere they can get at the horse, or per- 

 liaps a blow with their whip, whereupon the animal 

 elevates itself on its hind legs, and becomes a rearer. 

 If the spurs, or even the whip, had been applied in 

 proper time — that is to say, before the horse came to a 

 stand-still— there would have been some use in them, 

 and it would probably never have come to rearing at all. 

 But if a man's legs are spread far away from the horse's 

 sides, and he thinks proper not only to dangle his reins, 

 but to sit with his back rounded in the so-called "know- 

 ing fashion," he will then have no " feeling in his seat," 

 and is consequently quite ignorant of what his horse is 

 (/oing to do, and of course must come too late with both 

 spurs and whip, if he happened to possess these imple- 

 ments. An immense majority of rearers learn this vice 

 when being ridden about in a slovenly manner by 

 young riders or grooms ; a man that keeps a lively feel 



