REARING. 315 



vindictive as well as rebellious. There are, I think, ex- 

 tremely few rearers of this kind ; as in all my experience 

 of bad equine characters in various parts of the world, I 

 can remember only one rearer of this description. I am 

 inclined to think that such animals are very seldom met 

 with, and that the majority of horses which have the 

 reputation of throwing themselves back on their riders 

 would do so only under provocation from the man or 

 woman on their back. 



In breaking a rearer, if we find that his fault arises from 

 his being " behind the bridle," and probably from being at 

 the same time too impetuous, we may try to put him straight 

 by teaching him the turn on the forehand, both on foot 

 (see page 193) and mounted (see page 212), and by turning 

 with the long reins. It is often beneficial, supposing, of 

 course, that the ground is soft, to provoke the rearer to rear 

 when reining him back with the long reins, the outward 

 one being on the driving pad (see Fig. 91), and then try 

 to pull him over in order to practically demonstrate to him 

 the unpleasantness of such a reversal, so that he may 

 abstain for the future from placing himself in any such 

 position. As a further means of obtaining good behaviour, 

 I would take, with all rearers, this opportunity of having 

 them on the ground, to tie them head and tail and keep 

 them down, as I have described on page 311, until any 

 remaining " nonsense " which might have been lurking in 

 their minds had been removed. Since I adopted the 

 method, which I copied from the French Scuyers, of 

 teaching rearers the turn on the forehand (pirouette 

 renversee) with the whip, I have as a rule very little diffi- 

 culty in making even the worst rearers stop their pranks 

 and go in any direction in which I wished to ride them, 

 after giving them a lesson of this kind for, say, a quarter 

 of an hour. After succeeding perfectly in this manner. 



