I have to agree with Heidi. To me, the
walk is a most important gait, and I hate, hate, hate riding a
slow-walking horse. If I'm lucky to have bought a fast
walker......yippee! If not, then I set about to encourage the fastest walk
a horse can deliver. There are ways of training a fast walk, if the horse
has the capability of doing so. I also love a horse that has the strength
and will to do a running walk uphill. We train on HILLS, always, and we
have two horse that can just power uphill, at a sort of running walk. It
surely leaves the other horses breathless......
>Gaited horses - especially the walking horses and five gaited horses
- can walk out. If they don't they won't gait. The orverstird seems to come
with the package and as they get stronger the walk gets faster and more
powerful with more over stride.
Have found this true with the "gaited" Arabs as
well.
>The old time walking horse trainers - when they used
to spend time on them instead of trying to get the two minute maricle for the
show ring - used to have a rider take the horse out day after day and just
walk and walk and walk. They would say once they can walk everything else
falls into place.
One of my cornerstone bits of advice has always
been that the walk is the most ignored gait in endurance horses as well, and
if one spends time developing the walk early on, everything else benefits as
well.
>When I was riding the mare (TWH) she had a walk that
would require others to trot to keep up. I measured it one time - 6 miles in
one hour. This is the plan old easy flat footed walk - no running walk,
no gait. The one thing about it is the thrust that comes from the hind end on
every stride. You can really feel if you're not loose in the hips it can get
to you.
Yep on all counts. The stallion I
previously mentioned likewise would walk at about 5.5 mph pretty
consistently. The final 12 miles of the Santiam 100 that I mentioned was
done with an average well over 5 mph--and I've sat at enough finish lines in
the night to be able to tell you that the average speed of a walking endurance
horse at night is between 2 and 3 mph. Definitely an area where many
horses could use some work....
>With non gaited horses
that will gait and have a big walk, I suspect if you looked hard you'd find
there are two components. One is clearly wiring that gives them the tendency
to gait and also conformation that gives them the big walk.
