Natural Horsemanship based on a passionate riding instructor's papers by Otto de LaCroix with an Appendix by Paul Plinzner

Natural Horsemanship based on a Passionate Riding Instructor's Papers, by Otto de LaCroix with an Appendix by Paul Plinzner

First published in its expanded second edition in Berlin in 1905, this book is one of the most intellectually rigorous and quietly radical works in the history of classical horsemanship. Long unavailable to modern readers, it now returns as a vital document in the ongoing conversation about horse-friendly training, balance, and true self-carriage.

Emerging at a moment when the riding world was sharply divided, the book addresses the great controversy of its time: whether correct riding begins at the horse’s head and forehand, or whether posture and expression can only arise as consequences of correct balance, engagement, and seat-driven impulsion. The debate was personified by two towering figures—James Fillis, admired for brilliance and refinement, and Paul Plinzner, advocate of work from back to front. Yet this book refuses to become a partisan manifesto. Instead, it undertakes a far more demanding task: following the rider’s aids through the horse’s body step by step, and asking what must logically occur when anatomy, balance, and natural laws are respected.

Beginning not with dogma but with physical balance, de LaCroix demonstrates how genuine collection arises only from the engagement of the hindquarters, transmitted through an active, elastic back. Contact, flexion, and elevation are shown not as goals to be imposed, but as secondary effects—inevitable outcomes when the horse is ridden in harmony with its natural structure. Methods that manipulate the forehand in isolation may produce convincing appearances, the author argues, but they do so at the expense of internal connection and long-term soundness.

Remarkably modern in tone, the book anticipates today’s discussions of biomechanics, back activity, welfare, and self-carriage with striking clarity. Its relevance lies not only in its historical importance, but in its method: authority is withheld, names are downplayed, and the reader is invited to judge solely by coherence and consequence. Only at the end does the author reveal that editor, author, and original publisher were one and the same—an intentional gesture underscoring the book’s central claim that truth in horsemanship cannot rest on reputation, only on natural law.

The Chapter Titles:

1. The Artificial and Natural Foundations of Campaign Riding (field riding)

2. The Back and its Importance for the Horse’s Gaits

3. The Rider’s Aids and their Relationship to the Horse’s Movement

4. On Collection, and the Rider’s Aids for Achieve It

5. Purpose and Importance of the Lateral Movements in Dressage

How They are to be Executed. Conclusions for the Training

6. The Hard and the Soft Side of the Horse

7. About the Rider’s Aids on the "Bent" or Crooked Horse

8. The Plinzner system — Fillis — Natural Horsemanship

For riders, trainers, and scholars seeking a deeper foundation than fashion or slogans, Natural Horsemanship According to the Papers of a Passionate Riding Teacher remains as challenging, humane, and necessary today as it was more than a century ago.

Here's an excellent excerpt: 

"Most appropriate to the canter is the sequence:
“Counter shoulder-in – Travers – Shoulder-in – Renvers,” whereby the latter is either used for the change or appears as an immediately renewed counter shoulder-
in as a gliding, breath-like transition. The entire process plays itself out, so to speak, inwardly between rider and horse.
For example: right rein canter! A minimal pressing of the left seat bone inward, firm tension of the corresponding rein, and pressing drive bring the horse almost imperceptibly into the right aids (counter shoulder-in); the rein fingers vibrate, the right seat bone swings the received central weight outward to generate travers; left seat bone and the forehand, using the restrained soft pressure of the outer rein, push the forehand inward as if working on a very tight right volte, while the right aids merely continue the previous activity more softly (shoulder-in), until in the next moment—drawing in, it presses the horse to the left, while these, just as before toward travers, counter-bend the right. There is then a breath of renvers present, which either immediately transitions to counter shoulder-in, the right
aids swinging in continuous attachment into the tight left volte, whereupon the
cycle is complete and begins anew; or the transition to renvers is executed with a bit more accentuation, after which the right aids behave imperceptibly, the left drive imperceptibly, and the change occurs."

Translation by Richard F. Williams Copyright 2026