The riding-school is a bad place to teach a horse to leap

The riding-school is a bad place to teach a horse to leap

Leaping. The riding-school is a bad place to teach a horse to leap. The bar, with its posts, is very apt to frighten him; if a colt has not been trained to leap as it should be by following its dam before it is mounted, take it into the fields and let it follow well-trained horses over easy low fences and little ditches, slowly without fuss, and, as part of the ride, not backwards and forwards always leap on the snaffle. Our cavalry officers learn to leap, not in the school, but across country. Nolan tells a story that, during some manœuvres in Italy, an Austrian general, with his staff, got amongst some enclosures and sent some of his aide-de-camps to find an outlet. They peered over the stone walls, rode about, but could find no gap. The general turned to one of his staff, a Yorkshireman, and said, See if you can find a way out of this place. Mr. W k, mounted on a good English horse, went straight at the wall, cleared it, and, while doing so, turned in his saddle and touched his cap and said, This way, general; but his way did not suit the rest of the party.

Fonte: Tamming Horses