Page:Equitation.djvu/326

 Baucher and Fillis put their horses at the passage, and then, by altering the tempo of their attacks in diagonal, they slackened still further the already slow speed of that air. After a time, the horse would continue the cadence of the passage, but without advancing. Then they had the slow piaffer. Given the qualities of their horses, this was a rational method. But even so, there always came a time of defenses, fights, revolts. If I employed this method with the kind of horses that I train, I should kill the animals before they developed the strength of muscle needed for the slow piaffer!

I hold that it is no special obstacle to the piaffer if the horse's neck and legs are a little stiff, provided always that they are strong enough to serve as supports, two at a time. Where, then, is the great center of development of the forces which keep the whole inert weight balanced on two legs, keep the balance, and return two feet to the ground and raise the other two, without advancing or backing? I answer, at the coupling, the sacrum, the ilium, the pelvis, for the rear half of the body; and at the thorax for the front half.

Twenty years ago, E. L. Anderson, in his Modern Horsemanship, wrote: "Master H. L. de Bussigny professes that all the resistance of the horse is located in the posterior half of the horse; he is in contradiction with all the other masters, who find the center of resistance in the neck." I regard the iliac region, from the last lumbar vertebra to the