Horse gait

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This is an article on horse gaits, for other meanings see: gait (disambiguation).

Horse gaits are the different ways in which a horse, either naturally or through human training, can move.

Gaits can be roughly categorized into two groups: natural gaits that nearly every horse will use without special training, and several other gaits that may appear naturally in some individuals but which usually require special training and/or special breeding to enable the rider to obtain them by communicating with the horse.

1 The ordinary gaits
2 Additional gaits
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] The ordinary gaits

The ordinary gaits are walk, trot, canter, and gallop (in increasing order of speed). Some people count these as three gaits by considering the gallop a variation of the canter. Others count them as four separate gaits. All four gaits are seen in wild horse populations.

[edit] Walk

The walk, a four-beat gait.

The walk is a 4-beat gait that averages about 4 mph. When walking, a horse's legs follow this sequence: left hind leg, left front leg, right hind leg, right front leg, in a regular 1-2-3-4 beat. At the walk, the horse will always have one foot raised and the other three feet on the ground, save for a brief moment when weight is being transferred from one foot to another. A horse moves its head and neck in a slight up and down motion that helps maintain balance.

Ideally, the advancing rear hoof oversteps the spot where the previously advancing front hoof touched the ground. The more the rear hoof oversteps, the smoother and more comfortable walk. Individual horses and different breeds vary in the smoothness of their walk. However, a rider will almost always feel some degree of gentle side-to-side motion in the horse's hips as each hind leg reaches forward.

The fastest walk is the hereditary "running walk" of the Tennessee Walking Horse, which retains a regular 4-beat cadence but is characterized by an extreme overreach of the hind foot (often being placed as far as 24 inches ahead of where the front foot stepped) and speeds of up to 8 or 10 mph.

If a horse begins to speed up and lose a regular cadence to its gait, the horse is no longer walking, but is beginning to either trot or move into an alternative "single-foot" gait.

[edit] Trot

The trot, a two-beat gait involving diagonal pairs of legs. The two legs with white stockings are off the ground.

Main article: Trot (horse gait).

The trot is a two beat gait that averages about 8 miles per hour, or roughly the speed a human can run. A very slow trot is sometimes referred to as a jog. An extremely fast trot has no special name, but in harness racing, the trot of a Standardbred is faster than the gallop of the average non-racehorse.

In this gait, the horse moves its legs in unison in diagonal pairs. From the standpoint of the balance of the horse, this is a very stable gait, and the horse need not make major balancing motions with its head and neck.

The trot is the working gait for a horse. Despite what one sees in movies, horses can only canter and gallop for short periods at a time, after which they need time to rest and recover. Horses in good condition can maintain a working trot for hours. The trot is the main way horses travel quickly from one place to the next.

However, depending on the horse and its speed, a trot can be difficult for a rider to sit because the body of the horse actually drops a bit between beats and bounces up again when the next set of legs strike the ground. Each time another diagonal pair of legs hits the ground, the rider can be jolted upwards out of the saddle and meets the horse with some force on the way back down, unless he or she is trained to relax and absorb the shock of the gait.

Most riders can sit a slow jog trot without bouncing. A skilled rider can ride even a powerfully extended trot without bouncing, but to do so requires well-conditioned back and stomach muscles and to do so for long periods is tiring for even experienced riders. A fast, uncollected, racing trot, such as that of the harness racing horse, is virtually impossible to sit.

Therefore, at faster speeds, especially in English-style riding disciplines, most riders post to the trot, rising up and down in rhythm with the horse to avoid being jolted. Posting is easy on the horse's back and once mastered is also easy on the rider.

Because the trot is such a safe and efficient gait for a horse, learning to ride the trot correctly is an important component in almost all equestrian disciplines. Nonetheless, "gaited horses", or horses with smooth 4-beat intermediate gaits that replace or supplement the trot (see fox trot, running walk, slow gait, tolt and rack below), are popular with riders who prefer for various reasons not to have to ride at a trot.

[edit] Canter

Main Article: Canter

An Andalusian performing the canter. The left hind and right fore will land at the same moment, creating three beats in the stride. This horse is on the left lead, as the left fore will land last.

The canter is a controlled, three-beat gait that usually is a bit faster than the average trot, but slower than the gallop. Listening to a horse canter, one can usually hear the three beats as though a drum had been struck three times in succession. Then there is a rest, and immediately afterwards the three-beat occurs again. The faster the horse is moving, the longer the suspension time between the three beats.

In the canter, one of the horse's rear legs, the right rear leg, for example, propels the horse forward. During this beat, the horse is supported only on that single leg while the remaining three legs are moving forward. On the next beat the horse catches itself on the left rear and right front legs while the other hind leg is still momentarily on the ground. On the third beat, the horse catches itself on the left front leg while the diagonal pair is momentarily still in contact with the ground.

The more-extended foreleg is matched by a slightly more extended hind leg on the same side. This is referred to as a "lead". Except in special cases, a horse should lead with its inside feet on a circle. Therefore, a horse that begins cantering with the right rear leg as described above would have the left front and rear legs more extended. This would be referred to as being on the "left lead".

When a rider is added to the horse's natural balance, the question of the lead becomes more important. When riding in an enclosed area such as an arena, the correct lead provides the horse with better balance. The rider typically signals the horse which lead to adopt when moving from a slower gait into the canter. In addition, when jumping over fences, the rider typically signals the horse to land on the correct lead to approach the next fence or turn. The rider can also request the horse to deliberately take up the wrong lead (counter-canter), a move required in some dressage competitions, which requires a degree of collection and balance in the horse. The switch from one lead to another while moving in a straight line is called the "flying lead change" or "flying change". This switch is also a feature of dressage and reining schooling and competition.

If a horse is leading with one front foot but the opposite hind foot, it produces an awkward rolling movement, called a cross-canter, disunited canter or "cross-firing."

The word is commonly said to be short for "Canterbury-gallop", but it may come from an expression meaning "corner-gallop".

[edit] Gallop

The suspension phase, seen in the canter and the gallop.

The gallop is very much like the canter, except that it is faster, more ground-covering, and the three-beat canter changes to a four-beat gait. It is the fastest gait of the horse, averaging about 25 to 30 miles per hour, and in the wild is used when the animal needed to flee from predators or simply cover short distances quickly. Horses seldom will gallop more than a mile or two before they need to rest, though at a moderately-paced gallop can sustain it for longer distances before they become winded and have to slow down.

The gallop is also the gait of the classic race horse. Modern Thoroughbred horse races are seldom longer than a mile and a half, though in some countries Arabian horses are sometimes raced as far as two and a half miles. The fastest race horse is the American quarter horse which in a short sprint of a quarter mile or less has been clocked at speeds approaching 50 miles per hour.

Like a canter, the horse will strike off with its non-leading hind foot, but in what is the second stage of the canter, in the gallop becomes the second and third stages because the inside hind foot hits the ground a split second before the outside front foot. Then, both gaits end with the striking off of the leading leg, followed by a moment of suspension when all four feet are off the ground. A careful listener or observer can tell an extended canter from a gallop by the presence of the fourth beat.

Contrary to the old "classic" paintings of running horses, which showed all four legs stretched out in the suspension phase, when the legs are stretched out, at least one foot is still in contact with the ground. When all four feet are off the ground, the legs are bent rather than extended.

In a right-lead gallop, the sequence of events is as follows:

The left hind foot hits the ground to strike off into the gallop, then the right hind foot, placed about 1 meter in front of the left hind foot.
Then the left hind foot leaves the ground, and immediately afterwards the left front foot hits the ground. The horse is now supported on two diagonal legs, about 2.1 meters apart.
The right hind foot leaves the ground, and then the right front foot hits the ground, placed about 1.55m in front of the left front foot.
The left foot leaves the ground.
Finally, the right foot provides the push-off to reach the phase of suspension again.

According to Equix, who analyze the biometrics of racing thoroughbreds, the average racing colt has a stride length of 24.6 feet; that of Secretariat, for instance, was 24.8 feet, which was probably part of his success.

A controlled gallop used to show a horse's ground-covering stride in horse show competition is called a "gallop in hand" or a hand gallop.

Note that when a horse jumps over a fence, the legs are stretched out while in the air, and the front legs hit the ground before the hind legs, which is completely different from the suspended phase of a gallop. Essentially, the horse takes the first two steps of a galloping stride on the take-off side of the fence, and the other two steps on the landing side. A horse has to collect its hindquarters after a jump to strike off into the next stride.

Sequence of photos by Muybridge

In motion

Horse gallop rotoscoping from Edweard Muybridge's "Horses and Other Animals in Motion"

In 1892, Leland Stanford settled an argument about whether galloping horses were ever fully airborne: he paid photographer Eadweard Muybridge to devise an apparatus with multiple trip wires attached to camera shutters. The photos, the first documented example of high-speed photography, clearly showed the horse airborne.

[edit] Additional gaits

There are a number of intermediate gaits besides the trot that are faster than a walk but usually slower than a canter or gallop. There are several breeds of horses who have been bred to inherit the spontaneous or trained appearance of these gaits. For example, the Peruvian Paso and Paso Fino are two breeds which have a smooth innate intermediate gait. The Paso Fino has slow and fast versions called the paso corto, paso largo, and paso fino. Other breeds famous for a distinctive mode of locomotion are the Tennessee Walking Horse, with its running walk, and the Icelandic Horse, with the Tolt.

[edit] Pace

Pace

The Pace is a two-beat gait where the two legs on the same side of the horse move together. As in the trot, two feet are always off the ground, but in the trot, the two legs diagaonally opposite from each other move together. The trot is more common, but some horses, particularly in breeds bred for harness racing, naturally prefer to pace. Pacers are also faster than trotters on the average, but horses can be raced at a trot or pace. Among standardbreds, pacers breed truer than trotters – that is, trotting sires have a higher proportion of pacers among their get than pacing sires do of trotters.

The true two beat pace is uncomfortable for riding, as not only is the rider going up and down, as in trotting, but also side to side, like riding a camel. A rider cannot post to a pacing horse.

[edit] Slow gait

The slow gait is a general term for several slightly different gaits that follows the same general footfall pattern as the walk, in that lateral pairs of legs move forward in sequence, but the rhythm and collection of the movements are different. The common thread is that all are smooth gaits, comfortable to the rider. Terms for various slow gaits are the stepping pace, singlefoot and amble. Some slow gaits are natural to some horses, others are developed from the pace or the trot. A horse being trained to perform a slow gait may be put into a natural trot or pace, the length of the stride is kept long, but the rider will ask the horse to alter its balance so that the two strides break up in such a manner to produce a slight gap between the footfalls. The result is a four-beat gait that will be intermediate in speed between the walk and the pace, but very smooth. The stepping pace is said to have been used at times to transport wounded soldiers from battlefields.

[edit] Rack

The Rack or Racking is a gait that is also known historically as the "Virginia Single-foot Gait," with many breeds of horses capable of producing this gait, but most commonly associated with the Five-Gaited American Saddlebred. In the rack, the speed is increased to be approximately that of the pace, but instead of being a two-beat gait like the trot and the pace, it is a four-beat gait with equal intervals between each beat.

The rack, like other intermediate gaits is smoother than the trot because the hooves hitting the ground individually rather in pairs minimizes the force and bounce the horse transmits to the rider.

Riding the rack is like riding on a comfortable chair that slightly sways your hips gently from side to side. To achieve this gait the horse must be in a "hollow position". This means that, instead of a rounded back as seen in dressage horses and those that work off their hind quarters, the spine is curved downward. The downside of this is that this position weakens the back and makes the horse less able to carry the weight of the rider without strain.

This puts the racking horse in the best position to rack without breaking into another gait. If the rider sits back or leans slightly back this will cause the hollow back, or the back to curve downward. This allows the legs to trail and makes the rack easier for the horse.

A speed racker can achieve speeds of a fast canter. The ride is smooth, and the rider appears to remain motionless as the horse racks. The horse itself maintains a fairly still head and most of the action is in the legs.

The rack is a genetic trait in a breed called the "racking horse". A racking horse can rack as easily as other horses trot or canter. Some people debate if the Racking Horse is a stand-alone breed, but is was given that designation by the USDA in 1978, and the breed has its own organization today. The Racking Association's goal is to preserve the Racking Horse in a natural state with little or no artificial devices that enhance gait. The horse's tail is naturally raised without nicking. Some classes allow special shoes that enhance the gait but chains and other devices are not allowed. (One banned practice is the application of caustic chemicals just above the hoof, known as "soring," so-called because a horse alters its gait due to discomfort or sore feet. This is a federal offense within the United State of America under the provisions of the Horse Protection Act.)

[edit] Fox Trot

Main article: Fox trot.

The foxtrot is most often associated with the Missouri Foxtrotter breed, but is also seen under different names in other gaited breeds. The foxtrot is a four-beat diagonal gait in which the front foot of the diagonal pair lands before the hind, eliminating the moment of suspension and giving a "no bounce" ride. The foxtrot is a comfortable gait for trail-riding. ^[1]^[2]^[3]

[edit] Tölt

Icelandic horses at the tölt

Tölt is a gait that is often described as being unique to the Icelandic Horse. In its pure form, the footfalls are the same as in rack, but the Icelandic horse is bred for more freedom and liquidity of movement. The most prized horses have a very long stride and high lift with their forelegs.^[4]^[5] Icelandic Riders will demonstrate the smoothness of a tölt by going at the speed of a gallop without spilling a drink they hold. However, some of the breed have a tölt that is considered imperfect, and may be described as a "trotty tölt" or a "pacey tölt".^[6]

The majority of Icelandic Horses can also pace, and are thus called "five-gaited". Their five gaits are walk, trot, canter, tölt, pace. Good pacers are held in high regard in this breed, but for a pacer to stand out he has to be able to perform the pace at a high speed.^[7] Slow pacing in Icelandic horses is considered a major flaw. A horse that goes at a slow pace, or "piggy-pace," is called lullari.

Some breeds of horses that are related to the Icelandic horse, living in the Faroe Islands and Norway also tölt.

[edit] Running Walk

The Running Walk is a four beat gait with footfalls in the same sequence as the regular walk, but characterized by greater speed and smoothness. The hind feet overstep the front feet by a substantial margin, as much as 24 inches in some cases. It is a distinctive natural gait of the Tennessee Walking Horse.