FIG. PAGE 1.--STRICT REGIMENTAL 3 2.--VARIED REGIMENTAL 4 3.--REINS AT FULL LENGTH 15 4.--DOWN CLUTCH 17 5.--DOWN CLUTCH, REIN IN EACH HAND 18 6.--SIDE CLUTCH 19 7.--SIDE CLUTCH, REIN IN EACH HAND 20 8.--CROSS 22 9.--REIN IN EACH HAND 23 10.--TURN TO THE RIGHT 25 11.--TURN TO THE LEFT 26 12.--HUNTING GALLOP 27 13.--ROUGH-RIDER 28 14.--FIXING HANDS 29
MILITARY RIDING NOT FIT FOR COMMON RIDING.
Throughout Europe there is only one style of riding _taught_; that is, the soldier’s _one-handed_ style.--_Two hands_ should be used to the reins.--A soldier’s horse must turn on the wrong rein.--Common riders generally turn their horses on the wrong rein. Result of this with colts or restive horses.--Indications are not _aids_.
When you wish to turn to the right pull the right rein stronger than the left. This is common sense. The common error is precisely the reverse. The common error is, when you wish to turn to the right to pass the hand to the right. By this the right rein is slackened, and the left rein is tightened, across the horse’s neck, and the horse is required to turn to the right when the left rein is pulled. It is to correct this common error, this monstrous and perpetual source of bad riding and of bad usage to good animals, that these pages are written.
[Sidenote: Only one style of riding _taught_.]
[Sidenote: That is, a _one-handed_ style.]
England is the only European country which admits of more than one style of riding. But in all Europe, even in England, there is but one style of riding _taught_, as a system; that style is the manége or military style. The military style is, and must ever be essentially _a one-handed style_, for the soldier must have his right hand at liberty for his weapons. The recruit is indeed made to ride with a single snaffle in two hands, but only as a preparatory step to the one-handed style. His left hand then becomes _his bridle hand_, and that hand must hold the reins in such a manner as will require the least possible aid from _the sword hand_ to shorten them as occasion may require. This is with the fourth finger only between them (Fig. 1).
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--STRICT REGIMENTAL.]
For these reasons, as far as soldiers are concerned, I do not see how the present system can be altered for the better, unless it be by placing the three last fingers of the left hand between the reins (Fig. 2), instead of the fourth finger only. The reins held in this way are as easily and as quickly shortened, by drawing them with the right hand through the left, as if they were separated by the fourth finger only. I always adopted this mode myself when my sword was in my hand; and I should think it worth trial for all soldiers. My two last chargers had been notoriously restive horses, and I could not have ridden them in the strictly regimental mode.