What is Equitation?

Excerpt from “Understanding Equitation”

by Commandant Jean Saint-Fort Paillard

“Is it really necessary that the problems of riding, which have fascinated men for so long and continue to do so, should forever remain muddled and confused?

“For example, people still speak of the ‘French School' and the ‘German School,' some to oppose them and others to maintain that they have finally become identical. But if some people still know what they used to be, nobody is capable, as far as I know, of stating clearly what they are today.

“Besides, all over the world people ride horses, sometimes very well, without feeling the slightest need to claim membership in one school or the other – including Frenchmen and Germans. So one ends up by believing that discussions of the subject, which so easily turn into quarrels as endless and intricate as the famous Byzantine one over the sex of the angels, have become pointless and outdated.

“Isn't it time, then (and haven't we taken a long time to realize it), to reconsider these riding problems?

“A philosopher once said, ‘It is easier to solve a problem than to pose it.' Perhaps. In any case, it is certainly unreasonable to claim to have solved a problem without having first posed it well, that is to say, without having established its premises as clearly and comprehensively as possible.

“In the case that concerns us, the ‘riding problem,' the solution of which has been the subject of inconclusive argument for centuries, isn't it common sense and sound logic first to try to reach an agreement as to just what the problem is, to define it, to pose it?

“What is riding, after all? If we had to define it for a totally ignorant person, such as a Martian who had just landed on earth, we would probably have to say something like this: ‘Riding is the act of a human being's sitting astride the back of an animal called a horse, of being carried by it, and of making it obey him with the aim of utilizing it for various practical or sporting purposes.'

“As a matter of fact, riding in all its forms is basically no more than the art of utilizing an animal. Since man first realized that it was possible for him to subordinate certain animals to his will, through necessity or for pleasure, there have gradually emerged a few basic truths which it might be useful to recall:

The utilization of any animal for a specific purpose, no matter how simple, is absolutely inconceivable if the animal in question has not previously been given specialized schooling for that particular purpose.

It naturally follows that the assurance, ease, and efficiency of the utilization of an animal by man, and therefore the quality of its performance, are completely dependent on its schooling. The greater the difficulty and complexity of the utilization, the more advanced and solid should be the schooling. Otherwise, the animal's performance would be unassured, difficult, or inefficient.

Finally, in the case of a ‘utilizer' who has not himself been the trainer, the quality of his utilization of an animal is exactly dependent on the precision and efficiency with which he is capable of exploiting the means previously created by the trainer.

“These few self-evident truths, which are equivalent to basic principles, are perfectly valid for all animals, without exception – for parrots and elephants, falcons and dogs, dolphins and horses.

“There is still another basic truth concerning the training and utilization of animals: Due to the lack of any other means of communication, it is only by making them feel physical sensations that man can make himself understood and obeyed, a combination of sensations being necessary whenever the command is not simply elementary, and a succession of sensations whenever the execution of the command has to be controlled, corrected, or modified.

“These sensations may concern any of the five senses, but most often they involve the senses of sight, hearing, and touch. In some special cases, the sense of smell and even of taste can be utilized too.

“Here should be inserted a word especially for equestrians, because the above truth, which is perfectly obvious to all other animal trainers and utilizers, most often seems to escape riders. At least, they generally behave as if they were unaware of it. Since they are in direct physical contact with the horse and communicate tactile sensations to it through the use of their muscles, they are easily taken in by the utterly false illusion (which is all the more convincing to them because it seems to be verified by certain superficial effects), that they act directly on the horse's body through force, and thereby obtain a sort of mechanical response.

“In reality, the force they employ in their actions, consciously or unconsciously, merely creates stronger sensations, sometimes increasingly painful ones. Without realizing it (therefore more or less ineffectively), they are simply conforming to the principle formulated almost a century ago by General Alexis L'Hotte* in the very first pages of his book Questions Équestres: ‘The basis of obedience in a horse, whatever it is used for, is the same. . . . It resides solely in the animal's instinct of self-preservation, which makes it attempt to avoid pain by responding to the warning of factors that may cause it and may continue to cause it, when necessary, until obedience has been obtained. Our means of domination have no other foundation.'

“Thus, in a very general sense, the principle of all schooling is to teach an animal to respond to a precise sensation with a specific reaction, reward and punishment always being the principal means of obtaining ‘understanding,' and sufficient repetition being the best procedure for establishing this understanding in a lasting way.

“A schooling program may be considered successfully completed when the desired reaction to the sensation created has become like an automatic reflex and is thus the same in every kind of circumstance. Unconditional obedience, which should be the result of all schooling, would then be achieved, making possible a relaxed and reliable utilization of the animal, which is the ultimate goal.

“To conclude these general principles, one more point should be noted:

“The education of a human being may be completely separate from the use that he will eventually make of it. For example, in the simple case of training a manual laborer, an explanation and a demonstration of what he has to do are provided before he is asked to do it.

“The training of an animal, on the contrary, can never be separated from the performance it makes possible. The distinct ideas of ‘training' and ‘performance' are intermingled in actual practice, since the result of training is necessarily an act of performance, no matter how imperfect it may be at first, and every act of performance is at the same time an act of training, since, according to its quality, it either improves, reinforces, or impairs the degree of training that has already been attained.

“No animal can be trained unless it is endowed with a memory. But an animal's memory is not selective. It therefore tends to remember all the feelings resulting from its association with man, without being able to distinguish between what was supposed to be ‘training' and what was supposed to be ‘performance.' So it retains indiscriminately all of the ‘lessons' it receives, consciously or subconsciously, for better or for worse. And this is why an animal's training can never be considered definitive and thus comparable to the knowledge assimilated by the human brain.

“Now another word especially for riders. Those who claim that they do not school, or who even go so far as to believe and assert that it is preferable not to school the horses they ride, are simply talking nonsense.

“It is a pity, because there are many who feel this way, but that's how it is. The fact is, of course, that all riders are trainers, whether they realize it or not. In any case, it is obvious that they are able to obtain performances from the horses they ride only thanks to the schooling the horses have previously received. From this point on, there are those who ride well and for whom their horses perform well, sometimes even better and better. And then there are all the others who do not ride so well or who even ride badly, and for whom their horses perform not so well, then less and less well, and finally worse and worse.

“All of them are ‘training' every time they ride, even though they are perhaps unconscious of the fact; some of them are successful, due to their instinctive talent, and the others practically undo the training their horses have already received.”

*From childhood, Alexis L'Hotte (1825-1904) had a passion for equitation. As a young cavalry officer, he was the pupil of the two most famous French riding masters of his time, François Baucher and Count Antoine d'Aure. Very much in favor of outdoor riding as it was practiced in England, and which he effectively helped to introduce in France, he became one of the greatest, if not the greatest, high-school riding masters of all time. Throughout his life, he devoted his thorughtful intelligence to the study of his art, and he left two books, which were published after his death: Questions Équestres (Equestrian Questions) and Souvenirs d'un Officier de Cavalerie (Memoirs of a Cavalry Officer), republished by Émile Hazan, Paris.