Book - “The Horse Crucified and Risen” (Horse Encyclopaedia)

This is the first book in the history of mankind revealing the whole truth about horse and man relations. Its author is a master of the most  difficult and the most beautiful school of horse training and education  Haute Ecole, and he is living proof that a horse can be trained and  educated without any means of constraint and punishment.

The book reveals a lot of secrets of horse training and discloses the truth about the painful essence of the equestrian sport. The true history  of the cavalry and the history of those cruel instruments of strict  enforcement that people used for horses during almost thirty centuries, never thinking that there is a completely different way...

Now you have a great possibility to buy an anusual book “The Horse Crucified and Risen” (“Horse Encyclopaedia”) created by Alexander Nevzorov. The book opens to a reader secrets of education of a horse without any violence, without any bits and punishment. Moreover, this book includes unlimited hard analysis such a phenomenons as equestrian sport, history of cavalry, history of means of enforcement.

A movie with analogous name has already split the horse-world of Russia to implacable supporters and furious opponents of Nevzorov.

The book is not a repetition of the movie. This book, to tell true, is more serious, more hard, more reasoned. Such a peculiarity of communication between a human and a horse as a bit bridle was showed by the author not only on the base of his emotions and abilities to teach a horse without a bit but on the vast and exact data of world veterinaries, on the labours of the best hippologers of nowadays.

Fortunately the book is not limited by frames of ether-time and the author has an opportunity to prove all his statements by attraction of indisputable and absolutely authoritative sources.
Those who know what is “The Horse Crucified and Risen”, are in the firm belief that this book will blow up consciousness of many-many people and probably become the main book for those who are looking for particular, honest way of building communication with a horse. The book is well-illustrated and keeps truly encyclopaedic knowledges.

Let’s go through some lines from prologue:

“I am absolutely sure, this book should not been read or even opened by those who chose equestrian sport, horse racing or driving and so on as their profession or amusement. Sportsmen, jockeys, riders and ones who similar to them will find out nothing good from this encyclopaedia. On the contrary. Also it would be better not to have such a public among readers because of their rancour , obstinacy and remarkable aggression that they show when they are trying to defend their right to force and torture horses.

I would prefer to stay in private eye with a few those people who completely understand or try to understand the essence of relationship between human and horse.

If you even try hard you will scarcely find an area being so false and having as much lie as human-horse relationship.

Even the most unpopular and third-rate religions include either less lies or that lies are skillfully based on some kind of right dogmas of psychology and, nevertheless, addressed to a human, the being who always has a choice to tell them to go to the devil.

Well, frankly speaking, I am not much interested in people. This book is about history of relationship between human and horse. It is about main secrets of a horse’s mind, about her fantastic generosity, the skill to love and to be a friend, about her main misfortune – the proximity to humanbeings.

Personally I, probably, can more authoritatively that anyone talk about these her features, raised without any brutality, without straps, pieces of iron and sticks, sufficient quantity of horses.

Just have a look to any century and you will find unbelievable quantity of lies that concerns relationship between human and horse and also education of horses. Lies that are dense and joyful. Intoxicate lies. From sweet fairy tales to crazy thoughts how stupid horses are, to instructions of a sadist James Fillis “how to burn a horse with a fire”.

Firm sureness of anthropomorphic monkey in its right to cause pain to “under being”, like it supposes, and its ability to go to its aim by the road that is covered with horse’s corpses, that combination of devices, sureness and cruelty gives, as everybody knows, excellent results in equestrian “sport”.

May be, we can hardly understand motivation of people who seriously dream about Olympiad and stony, gradually and passionately torture, disable horses for Olympiad's sake…

Using different devices by them is based on total blooming of their minds and hate that has been in progress during their equestrian sport’s lessons for years. Hate to a Horse. Well-known psychosis of “hunger of possession” triumphes and direct their actiones. In that case it is possession of a “rosettes” (pieces of carton with a ribbon and a sign of a placement), mugs, diplomas and medals of different size. There are no other reasonable explanation to their behaviour and could not be. By the way, some kind of a role plays here an opportunity of easy self-esteem. Because equestrian sport is a suitable thing!

For myself, I long ago combined all people’s funs, amusements, that are based on tortures and misunderstanding of a horse and I suppose that thrios, horse racing, races, bullfighting, circus, thriathlon, dressage, hire, show jumping – all these, actually, are the same things.

All these disciplines have one main common feature: all of them are based on complete misunderstanding of a horse, unknowing, not hearing of her and bringing to mind as biological
mechanism, that is ought to serve a human in his fun – just because it ought to do it!

99 percents of horsemen know they will never reach Olympiad, that all their lives they will spend in local stable or take part in miserable local competitions, but, oh God, with what importance they engage to their horses standing martingales, how much clown’s gravity in
bit-selection!

How much funny and horrible show off in their trainings and objections. More than anything they like to tell something in behalf of a horse.

It could be so funny to listen to “hire-ladies” (of any sex) who are playing in equestrian sport for some reason, and after a one hour of mortising, striking a horse-back by their fat hind quarters, dismounted, they usually lisp, absolutely sure in love of a horse to themselves."

An extract from the chapter “Equestrian Sport”

The circus is another story altogether. Oh, it really is quite another story… In short, it has all the same special equipment that there is in sport, all the same stupidity and cruelty, but…

The circus is a world unto itself, secret and closed. This is a world in which the very chemical composition of the air seems to be fundamentally different from everywhere else.

For the halfwit and the dupe, for the correspondent who has been allowed the briefest of glimpses into its inner backstage realms, the circus holds ready and prepared the clown’s foolish smile and a couple of old yarns about horses.

The circus knows all about itself and is well able to defend itself against prying eyes and ears.
Its defences have been perfected over centuries. The halfwit will sit and watch what he is shown – then he’ll go away, convinced that he has seen the circus from the inside.

This is a delusion and a lie. Only those who are part of the circus ever see it from the inside.

They are the only ones who can see themselves and others like them as they really are. It is only alone with themselves or with others like them, those to whom they are bound by the thirty-metre red circle of the circus ring, that they act naturally and stop lying. Seeing the circus from the inside, really knowing the circus, requires a peculiar kind of transformation.
You have to become part of the circus.

Until this transformation has taken place, you will not be able to see anything, observe anything or understand anything. The nature of this transformation involves the transformation of many ordinary human concepts.

Good and evil change places or are smelted into some third quality that combines these two concepts within itself. Torment, human or animal, ceases to appear as torment and somehow starts to seem like something sound, original and cheerful.

There are many astonishing metamorphoses! Do you know how they set a horse on pesade in the circus? You know, on rear. It’s very simple. They take a horse. They attach a long rope to the “iron” in its mouth. On the right or the left side of the bit – it doesn’t matter which.

The cable is raised into the darkness high up under the big top and passed over a pulley. The same pulley they use for safeguarding the trapeze artists. The end of the rope that has been passed over the pulley is lowered back into the ring, in front of the horse or behind it. Three or four of the more hefty circus men grab hold of the rope, all wearing mittens in order not to burn their hands.

The trainer smacks his lips, cracks his lunging whip - and the three men in mittens tug down hard on the cable, jerking up the horse towards the pulley high in the big top by the bit in its mouth until it is raised absolutely vertical.

Two men beat the horse from behind as a preventive measure to make sure that it doesn’t stagger or tumble over backwards. The trainer beats the horse from the front to make sure it won’t try to lower itself back down. During this exercise the horse’s mouth is usually torn until it bleeds.

The horse’s strong, powerful lips cannot withstand the sudden jerk, and its bloody eyes pop out of their sockets. The trainer usually jokes afterwards (with a laugh): “Put its eyes back in”.

These words are not spoken to anyone in particular, not to his assistant or the horse-holder. They are, rather, addressed to a god, the powerless god of horses, who sees everything and is already waiting for this circus horse’s soul. Oh yes, I forgot: when it’s all over, they thrust a carrot sliced into rings into the torn mouth of the trembling, sweat-soaked horse.

The bloodstained carrot immediately drops out and goes tumbling across the surface of the arena. May you see this scene before your eyes the next time you take your nephew to the circus!

An extract from the chapter “Training”

The most important point in a horse’s education and training is, of course, the collection.

The collection is that position of a horse’s body which puts it in a certain state of psychological and muscular concentration, total readiness for movement or for focused, absolute immobility.
The external sign of the collection is a powerful bringing its hocks well under its body and elevating the back and flexing the poll.

The internal, infallible sign of the collection can be sensed by the rider (and also during work in hand: it is the concentration of the greater part of a horse’s weight in the hips, the loin and the muscles of the croup.

The collection is the precise quality that the founding fathers of “Haute Ecole” so passionately required from a horse, what they believed (quite correctly) allowed the horse to support a rider on its back without doing any damage to its health.

The movement of a horse carrying a rider without collection breaks its back and cripples the horse. The immense weight of the abdomen and its contents pulls on the spine, which is then additionally burdened by the weight of the rider. Apart from anything else, the collection mobilises the muscles of the abdomen, transferring the responsibility for supporting its weight to them.

It is only a voluntary, natural collection that is valued, not the collection that is produced by urging from behind (with a spur or a whip) and by restraint from the front (by bit, mediacana or cavesson.

The collection must only be voluntary, that is the kind in which at any moment, if the horse should feel pain because the strain on the muscles is too extreme, it can easily emerge from this state by relaxing its neck and the muscles of its back, and even of its hips if it so wishes. A forced collection is crippling. Five minutes of forced collection creates serious problems in the region of the neck, back, spine and crupper, problems which require more than one month of treatment.
Twenty minutes of forced collection makes a horse an invalid for the rest of its life.

In its wild state a horse often collects itself naturally. In a fight between stallions, which takes place for the most part on the hind legs, a horse only gains the freedom to strike its opponent with its forehooves if its croup is well engaged, that is, on condition that it is stable on it hind legs and can easily maintain its balance. (A well exercised Haute Ecole horse must be easily able to perform the easily – i.e., walk five or six steps even under the weight of a rider in his hind legs. Twelve to fifteen steps without a rider.)

It is not possible to be stable and maintain a good balance with outthrust hindquarters, and therefore the hindquarters must be very well engaged under the body. The more thoroughly this is done, the higher (up as far as absolute vertical) the horse can raise itself.

And the higher the horse rises, the greater its superiority in battle, for it becomes possible to strike downwards with the forehooves. In the collection for a duel in the wild, the poll becomes the highest point for two reasons. The head is lowered until the cheeks are pressed against the neck so as to provide cover and protection for the jugular vein, which the opponent always tries to bite through. The head is also lowered in order to achieve the final tightening of a certain general ring of muscles in the body and ensure absolute manoeuvrability and elasticity in the movements of the neck, shoulders and hips.

A stallion attempting to seduce a mare also starts by demonstrating his collection to her.
He does this for several reasons. The collection is an absolute indicator of status. Something like a general’s shoulder straps. A stallion who has never fought and never covered a mare cannot try to impress a young lady with the fabulous development of the straight ventral muscle of his head (m. Rectus capitis ventralis), which is responsible for flexing the atlantooccipital joint and lowering the head. A well-developed occipital region is the sign of an experienced lady-killer and successful fighter.

* * *

An Haute Ecole horse must work in a voluntary collection which results from the horse’s awareness of all the advantages of controlling its own hindquarters and flexing the poll.

The horse, as I have already said, is a quite incredibly intelligent and sensitive creature. It very quickly grasps for itself all the advantages of engaging hind legs and flexing the poll . Everything becomes easy.

Movements that were slack and slouching become brimful with a light, vital energy. The collection is performed quite easily at liberty, but this “ease” is based on two complex factors.

Firstly, you must be able to appeal to a horse’s intelligence, to its phenomenal ability to learn and understand. Secondly, its hind legs, croup and loin must be in at least in as good a condition as they are in a horse living in the wild. A horse living in the wild has abundant opportunity to work freely and energetically with its hindquarters.

* * *

How to teach the collection.

When a horse has been adequately exercised by working on its hind legs and, having gone through the twenty or thirty simplest exercises and it understands its instructor absolutely, then it is ready to be taught the collection.

The horse is “naked”, with only a string on its shoulders. A lunge is attached to the string.

This is only done to ensure that it moves constantly in a perfect circle. A large lunging whip is taken. (By this time, no matter where the horse has come from, no matter how dismal its previous life might be, it should already have understood that neither a switch, nor a whip, nor a lunging whip , nor a stick represent any kind of danger and there is absolutely no need to be afraid of them. It will be excellent if it realises that all these various bits and pieces are simply a part of the friend with whom it plays and exercises.

Even if the horse is not really afraid, but is still even the slightest bit wary of the whip or the lunging whip , then it is still too soon to teach it the collection. The educator asks the horse to make a circle round him in any trot. As a rule the horse does this with a perfectly free head, with its hind quarters extended, clutching at the ground with its forequarters and mincing along.

The goal is to get it to flex its head, raise the poll and neck and begin to propel with its hind legs, acquiring grace, strength and confidence. To do this a whip lash is introduced on the ground behind the horse’s hind legs so that it starts to follow the horse, snaking across the ground.

The horse must either take no notice of it or regard these manipulations with humour. (When I say “with humour” I mean that condition in which, while the horse does not yet understand what its master wants, it starts squinting indulgently and expectantly. At the same time its mood remains very good and it is still enjoying everything.) First and foremost the educator must understand the horse’s condition and mood, its emotional impulses. If the horse does not like what is happening, it will not learn properly. Trying to teach a horse that is angry or exasperated is a sheer waste of time. The basis of training is the ability to give the horse the immense satisfaction of successfully learning and mastering very complex items and elements.
Let us go back to the snaking lunging whip.

After a certain time the tip of the whip lash moves in closer, practically under the hind hooves. The horse begins to feel it, and since it regards the lunging whip as a part of its master, it tries to be gentle, raising its hind feet a little bit higher in order not to step on the lunging whip.
At the same time, the horse does not increase its speed, it maintains the same rate of movement, in which it is assisted by the master clicking his tongue as regularly as a metronome and the very lightest twitching of the thong on its shoulders in time to the tongue-clicking.

The twitching is produced by movements of the lunge. The lunging whip becomes more insistent and its finest part, the very tip, moves in under the horse’s hooves more and more often. The horse raises its hind legs a little higher more and more often – and at some point it propels itself from behind for the first time.

This is a supremely important moment, which should be reinforced with absolutely unbounded expressions of affection. Once this moment (which remains incomprehensible and invisible to any outsider) has taken place, the thong can be removed and the horse allowed to play its favourite, most daring and lively games.

If it likes playing ball, bring in a ball, three balls, ten balls. And play for all you’re worth.
If it likes nata’n’pi, let it launch an attack, it’s up to you to dodge out of the way. The important thing is to celebrate this moment. In any way possible.

The following day, when this gentle nudge from the hind feet is repeated, you should again praise and caress the horse, scratch its withers and give it something, but continue the exercise until the moment when both the horse and you understand that the tip of the lunging whip behind the horse is now perceived as a recommendation to engage with the hindquarter.
When the pushing becomes a habit, the horse will start carrying itself correctly.

And as soon as it starts moving purely “from the rear”, as it is called, its head will naturally assume the correct position. A horse may yield between the atlas and the odontoid, the two upper vertebrae, or sometimes it may not yield its head, but its neck, between the third and fourth vertebrae – there is no absolute rule concerning this.

The goal is not to get the back of the head to yield between the first and second vertebrae, the goal is to make the movement graceful and strong. The horse itself will choose which is the best way for it to round its neck and the poll. The important thing is to make clear to the horse the fantastic advantages it acquires in the collection.

Just as soon as the horse understands the collection, you can demonstrate the full advantage to it by teaching it the piaffe and passage.