BAUCHÉRISTE BASICS
From the content and style of Tom Bass’s exhibitions, he may be considered Bauchériste. It makes little difference whether this influence came from de Bussigny’s riding manual or secondhand through observation of other men who had been influenced by French horsemanship.
Nor does attribution take away from the individuality and uniqueness of Bass’s personal style (and the same may also be said of Hiram Tuttle). I confess that my own practice of horsemanship is also highly influenced by the teachings of Baucher; they have helped me to produce several delightful, finished riding horses who have also been boon companions. This explanation of Bauchèriste basics is thus coming from someone who has actually practiced them with success.
As a first principle, Bauchériste training for the High School assumes the great intelligence and desire to please of all horses; it prefers the term “education” to the term “training.” Tom Bass said, “Belle Beach has more common sense than most people.” Baucherism also assumes that all healthy, sound horses enjoy moving with vigor, so that they do not need to be driven forcefully forward. From the outset, the horse is shown that it can move forward with impulsion and yet not tense any muscle needlessly; the ultimate goal of training, and the measure of its success, is to produce a horse that will respond with every ounce of its energy with no accompanying increase in tension, either mental or physical. A perceptive reporter who viewed a Hiram Tuttle exhibition likened the ease and harmony that results from this to “congealed music.”
Some of the training basics shown in this sidebar are authentic reproductions by Henry de Bussigny of the best aspects of the 18th century School of Versailles. Baucher added to this classical practice his highly sophisticated understanding of the functioning of the horse’s neck, particularly
“jaw flexions,” which actually affect not only the jaw joints but the poll joint and the joints between the small bones (the hyoid apparatus) that support the tongue. The horse is thus not “ridden forward into a fixed hand” but assisted to release all tension in the joints of its neck, so that, as Baucher put it, “bracing up is annihilated.” Only then can the horse easily flex the joints of the hindquarter (the lumbosacral joint, stifle and hock). Flexion of these joints permits the animal to “sit down” behind, round his back, and raise the base of the neck.
Straightness and balance are also emphasized because no horse can easily collect if its body is out of alignment, and no horse will willingly collect if it feels off-balance. There is no attempt to
“make” the horse go forward, but rather he is educated (by use of the spur if necessary) to understand that, at the lightest touch of the rider’s calves, he must “rise to the leg and seat” or “raise the life in the body” and prepare himself to move wherever directed by the rider.
Once the horse goes freely forward, then Baucher says, “the main job of the rider is to govern the flow of weight and energy” in its body, and hence the famous saying “legs without hands, hands without legs.” Descente de main (reducing the pressure exerted by the hands to zero without dropping the reins) and descente de jambe (reducing the pressure exerted by the legs to zero so that they lie softly at the horse’s sides) are practiced in order to teach the horse not to depend upon the rider for impulsion and balance, but to carry itself; the result of this practice is lightness and maneuverability. Whenever a maneuver or change of direction is desired, Baucher taught that it is the rider’s responsibility to set the horse up ahead of time with body parts and balance so arranged that “the movement becomes not only easy but inevitable.”