right leg that the rider corrects this tendency and keeps the spine straight. I do not, at the beginning, employ my legs to maintain the straight position; but going straight, if I ask the flexion, and the haunches have a tendency to swing (a tendency, only, I say), I do not wait until the haunches have actually swung—it would then be too late—but at the first slightest feeling in my seat, my leg is ready with its effect. But I do not kick. To kick a horse with leg or spur is to me blasphemy.
As the horse reaches the corner of ring or manege, the rider continues the flexion of the neck to the left, sends the horse forward by means of his left leg, and turns it by the effect of the right, as in the reversed pirouette done at the walk. In this, the rider is entirely rational, in complete accord with the nature and anatomy of the horse, the regularity of its motion, and what it has been taught from the beginning of its education. But I submit that, after having taught the horse, with its head to the left, to move its haunches to the left at the effect of the right leg, as in the reversed pirouette or rotation, it is the height of absurdity to turn a corner to the right by means of right rein and right leg, a violation of the nature of the animal, a contradiction of all that it has been taught, and the reason for those terrible tempests of revolt so often experienced by Baucher and Fillis, when they asked movements, by lateral effects, when the r mounts were moving in diagonal action at walk and trot, while they used
