by Ginny Creed

People keep referring to a horse's natural paces and gaits. These can be defined as the gaits of walk, trot and canter, and paces as the different ways a horse can move within each gait.

For instance, at the walk you can have, a free walk on both or loose or a long rein, an extended walk, medium walk, and collected walk.

In the trot there are, the collected trot, the working trot, medium trot, and extended trot.

Understanding the walk

This is a four-beat movement where the horse moves its legs separately, giving you a clear 1, 2, 3 and 4 beat, rythmical and regular marching movement.

The horse moves its legs in sequence - right hind leg, right front leg, left hind and the left front leg.

There are several things to understand about a good walk.

It is the easiest gait to spoil and the most difficult to improve. A natural walk has freedom, stretch, activity, purpose and it's a forward, regular march.

The most common way to spoil the pace comes as soon as we pick up the reins. We restrain the horse's natural walk and in particular, we restrict the freedom of the shoulder.

Why does this happen so often?

Because riders have a problem about riding the horse from the back end forward and while ever we ride the horse from the front, dragging the back end along restricts the shoulder.

A question often asked by pupils is: 'Is there a difference in free walk on a long rein or a loose rein?'

Yes, there surely is!

A free walk on a loose rain is exactly that. The rein should be loose, it has a loop in it. 'Long rein' means a long rein, but with no loop in it and is not easy to perform.

The free walk must have quality. It should be as forward, as stretching, purposeful, active and with a clear swing to it.

There is an expression 'he walks through his back' and it is an apt description.

The horse's tail will swing 'gently' from side to side. Its belly will gently touch the rider's legs alternatively as its back swings and there is a clear overstep of the hind feet over the print of the front feet, which in some horses can be quite a lot.

It's a lot to think about, and a bit like Damon Runyon's description of quality: 'I can't define it, but I know it when I see it!'.

Other terms used are: there is a poor walk; an ordinary quality walk; and a faulty walk.

You can have a faulty walk when the rhythm is not regular, and the quality of the walk depends on all the other aspects. A walk is referred to as not regular when the hoof beats are irregular.

This is when the horse's feet strike the ground 1, 2 - space - 3, 4 and not 1, 2, 3, 4, evenly as if timed with a metronome.

When the walk is not regular, we call it an irregular walk and later if the fault becomes worse, we say it is a lateral walk which means that the horse is walking like a pacer, moving both legs on the same side almost nearly together and them the other two legs on the other side.

This lateral walk becomes more obvious as the collection in the walk increases and is almost an impossible fault to fix/correct once it is established. A horse with a lateral or irregular walk is marked down for that movement and again in the collective marks at the end of the test.

Rarely does a horse show irregularity in extended walk, sometimes it will in medium walk and it becomes obvious in collected walk.

So, how does the extended walk differ from a medium walk?

In an extended walk, the rider asks the horse to maintain the same rhythmical active, overstepping purposeful walk, but the horse also accepts the bit. That means it relaxes in the poll and the jaw, with the neck long and the head a little in front of the vertical.

For a medium walk, the horse has a slightly more collected frame, has accepted the bit, but maintains the same purposeful active walk. The horse will overstep a little less because it is a little shorter in its frame.

During a collected walk, the horse has a collected, up in front frame, it accepts the bit and maintain the same rhythmical, active purposeful walk.

But because its frame in collected, to maintain the walk with the energy coming from behind, it has to go somewhere, as the horse shortens its steps, it raises its feet a little and the walk in then said to be 'elevated'.

At no time do any of these walks become any slower, they just become shorter in the length of step.

Faults, such as toe pointing, called a 'parade walk', although sometimes thought attractive, are incorrect and out of place in competition dressage.

To keep your horse's natural walk quality, you must always be consciously riding forward with the must active walk you can. Don't ever walk as if you are both dreaming. It is easy for a horse to develop a lazy walk and then it is hard to improve and recover his original walk.

I'm serious when I say an eight mark in a dressage test should not be hard to get for you walk!

The Trot

The trot is a two-beat gait. The horse moves its legs in pairs, and each pair is made up of the diagonal front and hind legs. The horse moves with one pair on the ground, one pair in the air followed by a brief moment of suspension where the whole horse is off the ground.

The different trots are extended, medium, working and collected.

Piaffe and passage are also trot movements, but super collected trots. For the moment, we'll just look at the first four.

The working trot is the horses natural trot, rhythmical and balanced, soft, round and with swing from a relaxed round back. It is neither fast or running.

The medium trot is a bigger rounder trot with the horse moving with more energy and with marked activity in the legs and the hind quarters.

The medium is not a weak, extended trot, which should show as much lengthening and stretch as is possible.

The collected trot is a shorter, but active, rhythmical trot in a collected frame.

As with the other gaits, all these trots have the same rhythm. They don't become faster or slower as you shorten or lengthen the horses stride.

For some riders, the most difficult thing about the trot movement is to sit in the saddle. So next month lets look at ways to remedy this.