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Gaits of the Tennessee Walking Horse Welcome to the wonderful and
occasionally frustrating world of gaited horses. Unless you were lucky
enough to buy a horse that was completely "set" in his gait,
along with the lovely flat walk he also came with the unwanted bonus of
a bunch of different gaits that you probably didn't know existed when
you were riding walk-trot horses. If you are ever going to ride your
Tennessee Walking Horse well, you will need to learn about those gaits.
You will need to look at how horses move, listen for hoof beats and feel
some very subtle differences in rhythm and sway in the saddle. You need
to learn how to tell one gait from another. Defining Gaits Gaits are usually defined by their
footfall sequence, timing, support sequence, and the shift in the center
of gravity of the horse. There are many gaits theoretically and actually
possible for horses, but the ones most likely to occur in a Tennessee
Walker (in no particular order) are: the hard trot; the fox trot- the
"fox walk"; the running walk- the ordinary walk; the flat
walk; the stepping pace; the hard pace; the rack; the "saddle"
rack; the canter; the lope; and the gallop. Within each of these gaits
there are some possible variations. For example: a true trot is defined
as a diagonal gait in which right hind and left front hit the ground at
the same moment, followed by a moment of suspension when all four hooves
are clear of the ground, followed by the simultaneous touch down of the
left hind and right front. However, in some horses that are very
collected, the hind hoof of the diagonal pair sets down before the
front, and in others that are "heavy on the forehand" the
front of the diagonal pair hits first. Sometimes, the moment of
suspension disappears and there may be a point in which three hooves are
in contact with the ground. Since you can't see any of these variations
without slow motion video, don't worry about them. All you need to know
to ride effectively is which general gait a horse is doing, not
precisely how he is doing it. Scientific gait analysis is not necessary
for riding and enjoying your horse. HOW TO LOOK AT A GAIT
Without using video to slow down the
motion, you look at a moving horse in real time. There is a lot going on
and it can be confusing if you just look at the whole horse and try to
decide what he is doing. The trick is to look at the horse in parts,
then to put them all together to determine his gait. Look at legs, look
at hooves, and then pull back to see what the rest of the body is doing. Legs
If the legs appear to move independently
of one another, not moving forward together or paired with legs from the
far side, the horse is doing a square gait. This may be either a walk,
flat walk, or running walk. All of the lateral, diagonal and square
gaits are symmetrical, that is, the legs on one side of the horse mirror
the actions of the legs on the other. If some legs appear to work
together and others do not, the horse is doing an asymmetrical gait,
either a canter or gallop. Since those gaits are fairly easy to
recognize, we'll concentrate on identifying the symmetrical ones. Hooves and beats Once you have an idea which legs are
moving together (lateral, diagonal, square) look more closely at the way
the hooves hit and leave the ground. Even without slow motion, you can
see the general characteristics of the gaits by paying attention to the
footfalls. We at Pleasure Gaits keep our horses barefooted if possible. Only when the hooves suffer too much we use shoes (kegshoes only). All our horses are shoed and/or trimmed by farrier Rudi Kumpen. |
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Other Gaits |
