of the sort. The scientific equitation cannot consider, teach, or admit any such devices.
The quick piaffer has the cadence of the trot, but the movements are rapid, and the action not high. To obtain this type of piaffer, the horse is first brought to the most complete possible state of equilibrium and kept in this condition at the manege walk. The rider then makes repeated attacks with the spurs, first with one, then with the other, in diagonal, at a tempo faster than for the passage and comparable to that of quarter-notes in music. At each attack the spur touches the flank near the girth, while the leg still maintains its pressure, and then moves away no more than the twelfth of an inch.
In the meantime, the rider, by the accuracy of his seat, helped by his fingering on the bridle, receives the excess of action given by the spurs, and holds the center of this action at the center of gravity. He should, thereupon, feel the hind limbs rise and fall alternately, a little in front of the perpendicular. If the hind legs are too far in front of the perpendicular, the horse cannot continue to move, except by contracting the two vasti muscles and rearing high. If when the horse rears, the rider instantly pushes it forward by leaning sharply to the front, the horse will leap. But if the rider does not immediately check the rearing, the horse will fall backward at once or paw the air with its front feet and then perhaps fall. But so long as the rider feels
