310 BESTIVENESS I ITS PBEVENTION AND CUBE. 



Here it may be well to say what the rider should do 

 if his horse runs away with him. The general impression 

 seems to be, that the safest thing is merely to endeavour 

 to keep the animal straight till it gets tired of galloping, 

 and keep one's own seat as long as possible ; consequently 

 the rider plants his feet as firmly as he can in the 

 stirrups, and shoves these out towards the horse's 

 shoulders in order to get fixed points from which he can 

 have a dead pull on the reins, and of course his body, 

 from the hips upwards, goes to the rear, right over the 

 horse's loins. Now, although this method of proceeding 

 suggests itself very naturally, it is nevertheless all 

 wrong, as, indeed, must be quite clear to those readers 

 who have read the preceding pages with any degree of 

 attention ; for whether the difficulty has its seat in the 

 horse's hind quarters, or in the throat and neck, it is 

 sure to be aggravated in this way ; besides that one can 

 seldom reckon upon having room enough to try this ex- 

 periment without encountering some obstacle, or a sharp 

 corner, that brings horse and rider down with a smash. 



Let us take the case of a horse running away in a 

 field or open space, in the first instance, as being more 

 easy to deal with. Here the principal object must be 

 to take your horse off the straight line and on to a circle 

 at first, of course, a wide one, but by degrees gradually 

 narrowing. On a circle one has room enough even for 

 the tiring process, seeing that it never ends, but the 

 thing is to know how to get and keep the horse on to it. 

 In the first place, then, it requires simply coolness and 

 self-possession sufficient to enable the rider to sit well 

 down in his saddle, bringing his legs well back and 

 keeping his body upright the legs being required there 

 to regulate the action of the horse's hind legs in the 



