The Paces

A horse has three paces, and each is named for its beat: the four beats of the walk, the two of the trot, the three of the canter.

A pace is defined by its sequence of footfalls. The tempo can change while the footfall sequence remains the same. If the sequence changes, the rhythm of the pace has changed.

Read next The footfall sequence of each pace, set out in full

The three paces also reveal different things about the horse as the work becomes harder.

I · Suspension, and the Pace That Has None¶

The trot and the canter each contain a moment when the horse is entirely off the ground. The walk does not. At every instant of the walk at least two feet, and often three, are down.

The absence of suspension makes every footfall in the walk particularly easy to observe.

In the walk, every foot is placed separately and the horse's weight passes visibly from one limb to the next.

Any change in the spacing of the four beats can therefore be seen and heard clearly.

II · What Goes Wrong in the Walk¶

The fault to watch for is the lateral walk.

The four beats should be evenly spaced. When they begin to pair: the hind and fore of one side falling almost together, then the hind and fore of the other, you hear a hurried one-two, three-four instead of four even beats. The walk has become lateral, and the pure four-beat sequence has broken.

As the work becomes more demanding, the walk still has to retain four clear, evenly spaced beats.

The free walk on a long rein shows whether that rhythm remains without support from the rider's hand.

III · Symmetry in the Trot¶

The trot moves the legs in diagonal pairs, with a moment of suspension between them. The two diagonal beats should remain even.

Each diagonal should carry for the same length of time as the other, so that the left half of the stride and the right half mirror one another. In a genuinely even, symmetrical pace the two halves of the stride are mirror images, and the movement transmitted up to the rider repeats evenly from one beat to the next. When one diagonal carries longer than its partner, the beat can still sound even to the ear while the body has become uneven underneath it.

The trot can make differences between the two sides particularly visible. The sequence may remain correctly two-beat while one diagonal takes a different length of step from the other. The ear can still hear two even beats while the eye sees the asymmetry in the stride.

A small unevenness on the flat becomes a real one the moment the horse is asked to turn, to collect, or to hold its balance through an obstacle.

IV · What Goes Wrong in the Canter¶

The canter is three beats: the outside hind alone, then the diagonal pair together, then the inside fore alone, then suspension.

A correct canter retains that three-beat sequence.

When a canter is shortened beyond what the horse can yet carry, the second beat is the one that breaks. The diagonal pair, which should land as a single beat, separates into two. A three-beat canter becomes a four-beat. When the horse can shorten while retaining the three-beat sequence, it is carrying the shorter stride. When the diagonal pair separates, the shortening has exceeded the balance the horse can currently support. The inside fore is the last foot to land and the one the eye follows, and it is that foot the lead is named for. The stride itself begins behind, with the outside hind, and travels forward through the diagonal.

V · What Each Pace Reveals¶

VI · Why the Sport Reads the Paces First¶

The first of the five collective marks in the Working Dressage test is given for the paces themselves, for their freedom and their regularity. It is a mark in its own right, above and before the individual movements.

Regularity affects every movement that follows. A half-pass is only as good as the rhythm it keeps. A lengthening is only as good as the beat it holds.

The obstacles put the same demand where you can see it stride by stride. The figure eight asks for a change of lead on the centre line with the canter unbroken through it, so the change is a change of leg and nothing more. The slalom asks for that change again and again between every pair of poles. Across the bridge, the walk still has to keep four clear, evenly spaced beats.

In each case, the horse has to complete the line or obstacle while preserving the correct beat of the pace.

Read next The four Governing Principles

VII · Read the Pace Through the Back¶

Walk, trot and canter can be recognised through their beats, footfalls and moments of suspension. The next layer sits above the feet.

It is the horse's back.

For College Members, Branch Two begins to look at whether the back lifts and remains supported beneath the rider. That affects the horse's ability to carry the rider, bend through a turn and bring the hind legs further underneath the body.

The muscles supporting the spine are part of that picture. Bone does not lift itself. Every change in the posture of the back is produced through the body around it.

That gives Members another way to read a pace. The beat tells you what pace the horse is producing. The back begins to tell you something about how the body is producing it.

As the study moves deeper, those two readings come together: the rhythm you can count and the organisation carrying it underneath the rider.