The horse's walk

It's almost a year ago since I wrote about the walk here on the blog.

Since there seems to be a lot of confusion as to how the horse should move in walk I will address this topic today.

The walk has a four-beat rhythm. In walk the horse moves its feet in the following order if we start with the lifting of the left front (A in the picture), then the right hind (B), right front (D) and left hind (F). When you look at a lateral pair, for instance the right hind and right front, you will see that these form a “V” during one moment of the step sequence (D).



(I have borrowed the picture from this web site. Here you can for instance read about how the use of photography in 1877 for the first time revealed how horses move their legs in canter.)

And here is a short animated film about how horses walk:



Pacing is when horses no longer walk with the correct rhythm, or sequence of steps. In pacing the horse moves both lateral legs at the same time. The ”V” shape in picture “D” above is never created. It is, I'm sad to say, fairly common to see horses pacing in dressage competition even at the highest levels. For some breeds pacing is a natural gait so the gait in itself is not incorrect, but it should not be seen in a dressage competition.

Tempo is another way of describing the horse's gaits and refers to the frequency of hoofbeats per minute. Just as we want the rhythm (the sequence of steps) to remain the same, we also look for the tempo to be the same whether of not each stride is longer (as in extended walk) or shorter (as in collected walk). In whatever tempo the horse walks, each leg should cover as much or as little ground as the others, and the standing phase (when the foot is on the ground) should be equally long for each individual foot. In a relaxed horse the standing phase tends to be longer than in a tense horse. The horse's speed, that is how quickly or slowly the horse will travel a certain distance, will depend on the length of the stride: longer strides make a faster speed, shorter stride a slower speed. If the tempo remains the same that is.

”The object of correct dressage is not to teach the horse to perform the exercises of the High School in the collected paces at the expense of the elementary paces. The classical school, on the contrary, demands that as well as teaching the difficult exercises, the natural paces of the horse not only should be preserved but should also be improved by the fact that the horse has been strengthened by gymnastics. Therefore, if during the course of training the natural paces are not improved, it would be proof that the training was incorrect.”

Alois Podhajsky (1967) “The complete training of horse and rider”, page 96.

Thanks to Mark Stanton of Natural Horsemanship Magazine for proof reading! Any remaining misstakes are all my own / Lena