(no subject)

[which_chick]

Day 1 of conditioning. Yeah, it's that time of year again, huzzah! (It's fun but also I don't get anything else at all done for the duration.) 1 hr actual time aboard, me (on Nick this year) and Jaicey (Charisma) and Kenzie (supposedly Raimah, but Jesse today because Raimah is not on site yet). It was fine. Hot, but fine. Tomorrow I need to buy feed (feed use goes up a lot when we are conditioning) and fly spray (concentrate) and so it begins.

Comments

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Topic for today was "Gaits. Gaits in horses are 3 seen in show ring, plus gallop." Material covered...

Walk
--4 beat gait
--each foot works alone
--no moment of suspension in the footfall cycle
--slowest

Trot:
--2 beat gait
--feet work in DIAGONAL pairs (left hind & right front; right hind and left front.)
--2 moments of suspension for footfall cycle.
--medium ("like jogging"), a nice compromise between "walk" and "canter".

Canter:
--3 beat gait
--Left hind, right hind and left front, right front -->right lead canter
--right hind, left hind and right front, left front -->left lead canter
--one moment of suspension PER footfall cycle.
--fast

Gallop:
--4 beat gait
--feet work alone
--one moment of suspension per footfall cycle
--very fast like racehorses

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

We did not discuss the glorious array of lateral gaits b/c nobody rides a laterally-gaited horse and the kidlets don't yet have the basic "normal horse" gaits down pat yet. Gotta walk before you can tolt.

[not-your-real.livejournal.com]

Canter and gallop both have one moment of suspension per footfall cycle? In the gallop, does that mean there's one jumping-off leg that leads into the suspension? In the canter, is it right after the two-leg step?

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

Canter and gallop both have one moment of suspension, correct. (Trot has two.)

Canter is LH, RH/LF, RF, SUSPENSION or RH, LH/RF, LF, SUSPENSION

Gallop is LH, RH, LF, RF, SUSPENSION (right lead gallop)
or RH, LH, RF, LF, SUSPENSION (left lead gallop)

Both canter and gallop have the suspension after the lead leg hits the ground. It's called the "lead" leg but the footfall patterns originate from the butt end of the horse, go figure.

In both the canter and the gallop, the horse's body kind of rocks forward/down, back/up (the whole body part, including neck/head) compared to the much more static body position that a horse maintains in the trot. This rocking motion characteristic of the canter and gallop help the horse lift up his body, bring his back legs underneath him, and strike off in the next stride cycle. The back/up rock is immediately before the "landing" part of the stride, right at the end of the moment of suspension. The horse goes sort of level when the middle part of the canter stride (the two legs working together) happens, then his weight shifts forward/down as the "lead" front leg hits the ground.

This is easier to see in slo-mo video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcD1_jvhc_g (gallop) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MAw61kegd8 (canter and trot).

The primary difference between canter and gallop is that the pair of legs working together in the canter splits apart in the gallop as the stride becomes longer and faster.

Back when there was no Jersey Shore on the telly, people debated questions like "Do horses ever have all their feet off the ground at a trot or not?" and similar for the gallop. Was there, in point of fact, a moment of suspension in these gaits? Apparently this was something of a hot topic in dorktastic circles until Leland Stanford (Gov. of California and probably the guy Stanford University is named for) hired a fellow named Eadweard Muybridge (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge) to settle the question of "suspension" once and for all with a photographic study of how horses trot and gallop. The wikipedia page has a nice animated gif of some of Muybridge's pictures demonstrating the horse at a gallop. As a result of Muybridge's work, Mr. Stanford, who held the "unsupported transit" (moment of suspension) position, was proved definitively to be correct -- trotting and galloping horses leave the earth entirely for portions of the gait.