POINT OF VIEW
help riders have fingers that are sensitive to their horse's needs,” she recently ex- plained. “There are times when they have to be so tight around the reins and times when they have to be holding a feather, giving in a split second to the horse's request for the chance to use his head and neck the way he may need it, either to see or to balance.” It is important to note
complicity all riders wish to have with their horse. Eric Navet always says the winning horses are the ones ‘who take you to the fence while staying light.’ They are easily controllable, yet moving forward in self-impulsion. La Guérinière was the first to coin the phrase “descen-
Nuno Oliveira schools the ex- racehorse Talar, who became one of his passions, in a study of piaffe in the little street in front of his old riding school.
that Lucinda insists the firmer hand is never used to pull backward, but rather to occasionally support a horse needing it to get off the ground. Her release helps the horse use his front end to either see his way through a combination, recover his balance in front of a fence or, most especially, after a fence, when a light hand allows him to telescope out his head and neck. Lucinda’s equestrian tact while riding cross-country
reminds me of the lessons I received from Master Nuno Oliveira. He said to me once, “Sometimes the hand needs to be made of concrete and sometimes of butter, go- ing from one to the other instantaneously, according to the resistance the horse presents or the release he just offered.”
ORIGINS OF LIGHTNESS In the early seventeenth century, Pluvinel wrote that if a horse was prepared methodically to cooperate with his rider, we must then diminish all the aids, “so the specta- tors could say with truth that this horse is so gentle and well trained that he appears to work on his own.” The author of The Maneige Royal gives us a prin- ciple that is the key to training in the deepest sense of behavior modification: by progressively diminishing the intensity of the aids, we engage both the horse’s comprehension and his goodwill. Progressively, the physical aids used to shape the horse’s movements will become mere signals designed to indicate our wishes. Self-carriage and self-propulsion as well as coop- eration are the elements of the
56 July/August 2017
te de main,” a technique that consists of a quick aban- donment of the feeling of the bit by the rider lowering his hand until the horse is completely free, as if “without a bridle.” Baucher and his followers Faverot and Beudant defined the concept further as a complete cessation of the aids while the horse maintains his gait with the same degree of energy.
SECRETS OF THE FRENCH EQUERRY Louis Cazeaux de Nestier did not write a line about horse- manship but earned accolades when in the saddle. He was the best friend of French King Louis XV, for whom he was reputed to have bought 20,000 horses during his long career as royal equerry. The king, whom he accom- panied every day out hunting, trusted Nestier implic- itly because he made sure his royal master had safe and pleasant horses to ride. According to all who saw him, Nestier was perhaps
the greatest rider of the eighteenth century. (As a re- sult, an impressive rider was called “a Nestier.”) We know this through two pieces of information that need to be reunited to make sense. First, his iconic portrait on “Le Florido,” a precious Andalusian gifted by the king of Spain to his cousin the king of France. Le Florido is seen in the transition of halting on the haunches in the portrait, his top line rounded and the reins yielded. What is remarkable in this
picture is the bridle: it is one of the first representations of a double bridle. Le Florido’s mouth is relaxed and wet, thanks in part to the right hand softly placed on the right rein that vibrates the snaffle. (The snaffle’s mission is to relax the tongue. The curb, called “a la Nestier” to this day, is the first truly soft bit in equestrian history. The short branches have a rapport of one to one and the mouthpiece is jointed, making each branch in- dependent of the other. This is a bit with practically no stopping power.) The second piece of information comes to us through
Louis Cazeaux de Nestier on Le Florido, circa 1751.
Portrait of Antoine de Pluvinel, 1552–1620.
the writings of General Alexis L’Hotte, a famed nine- teenth century horseman. Based on memoirs of the
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