animal tends to stay behind, rather than upon, the hand. I have spent some years in studying this anomaly. Baucher and Fillis also recognize this difficulty; and recommend suspending further progress and beginning over again to find the contact upon the hand by energetic impulsion at a fast trot or gallop. I too have practiced this method; but I find that after the impulsion at the trot my horse is excited and willful.
I reason the matter out thus. When the horse, at the Spanish walk, raises, extends, and sustains, alternately, the two front legs, it must be evident that this is done by the contraction of the two great muscles of the neck, the rhomboideus and the mastoido-humeralis, which have their fixed point in the atlas region. Now, this gait, obviously, cannot be other than the product of the diagonal effect. If, then, the diagonal effect produces the Spanish walk, and if the Spanish walk cannot be obtained without the fixed point at the atlas region, the contact of the bit must be the consequence of the fixed point, and therefore a result of the Spanish walk. Ergo, if my horse loses the contact with the bit, the Spanish walk will restore it again. This means, deduced from theory, I have found never to fail in practice.
When, therefore, a horse, in the progress of its training, begins to stay behind the hand, the best remedy is the Spanish walk. Thus, no time is lost; and the horse, always under the direction of the diagonal effect, is neither excited nor nervous.
