Page:Equitation.djvu/246

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is to perfect your own equestrian tact. When that is done, all your difficulties are easily surmounted. The walk of manege is the highest proof of the state of equilibrium, and you must learn to feel the horse under you flexing all its joints, developing its power, and cadencing its walk with a great but calm ardor, slow and high. When a horse has attained to the walk of manege, in complete equilibrium, every feat of the scientific equitation becomes possible both to rider and to steed.

TO ENTER THE CORNERS

"To enter the corner" is a manege expression meaning not to let the horse pass the corner of the enclosure close in or far out at its own will.

The manege is commonly rectangular, with two long and two short sides and a surrounding wall. The horse travels straight along the sides, but changes direction at the angles, to the right if being ridden with its right side toward the center—"at right hand" as it is called—to the left if the other way. Naturally, the animal tends to follow the barrier, and will, therefore, instinctively and of its own volition, make the turn before getting quite to the corner, or else will put its head against the wall and stop. In either case, the rider loses an opportunity to practice the management of his mount.

For in a manege of ordinary size, say one hundred and fifty feet by seventy, a horse in the course of an hour's lesson will turn a corner about two