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    Re: [RC] [RC] Born to Trot? - Heidi Smith


    > My neighbor who rides Grand Prix level dressage as said many times, to
    > look for a horse with a good walk and a good canter and forget about the
    > trot. A good trot can be taught, a good walk and good canter has to be
    > there.
    >
    > Truman
    >
    > Tamara Woodcock wrote:
    >
    > > Hmm..  My training numbers must be *way* off then...  a 15mph canter?
    > > That would be closer to hand gallop for us...
    > >
    > > I want a nice steady 8mph trot and a 12mph canter...  And I would
    > > absolutely love to get an actual honest clockable 4mph walk...
    > > Without having to use *my* legs to keep it up.  Sadly my horse doesn't
    > > have this walk on his own, more like 2.5 to 3mph...
    
    Truman, this is SOOOO true.  One of the most exhilerating rides of my life
    was doing the final leg of the Santiam Cascade 100 (12 miles that goes up
    over a big mountain, up a little mountain trail, with kind of a jeep road
    down the other side, and then a USFS road on into camp) in the dark in 2:05
    and never breaking out of a walk.  My old stallion Abu Ben Surrabu (aka
    "Junior") has a 5.5 mph walk (actual, clockable) that I call "march mode"
    and he just swings along with this big huge overreach.  You can improve on
    such a walk with training, but the ability is born in them.  I get
    goosebumps when I see young broodmares hiking around out here in the pasture
    with an 8"-12" overreach, just "plodding" along to the water trough or to
    another patch of grass.  And the canter likewise has to have the reach and
    the smoothness--one can't teach that.
    
    But in my experience that "big trot" is both metabolically and physically
    hard on a horse (back to the HR discussion about this--Howard and others, if
    your horse's HR isn't going up in the faster phases of the trot, then he
    just doesn't have this gear--it's like revving an engine up into the red
    zone instead of shifting gears, and that's how it gets on the HRM, too) and
    has very little application to our sport anyway.  I agree with Tamara that
    an 8mph working trot is great.  Yep, I've ridden horses that can "clock" at
    a 15 mph trot--and we used to laugh about horses that had to canter to keep
    up.  But I also noticed that the horses that break (even though they may be
    able to DO the "big trot") and go into a nice easy canter tend to go farther
    and last longer...
    
    But back to that walk--it's sure fun to be able to outdistance your
    competition in the dark, knowing that they are trotting trying to catch
    up...  :-)  (And Tamara, having vetted a great many 100's, I can tell you
    that your 2-3 mph walk is pretty typical, as that's the average most horses
    make in the dark when they are walking, and when we're waiting, waiting,
    waiting for them in camp....)
    
    Heidi
    
    
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    Replies
    Re: [RC] [RC] Born to Trot?, Tamara Woodcock
    Re: [RC] [RC] Born to Trot?, Truman Prevatt