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Who was the Belgium rider who stayed with Steph and John a few years ago, (was it Leonard?) did their ride and one of his comments was:

 

The US riders trot mostly, the French/European riders canter mostly.  (In training and at the rides.)  Most US riders I've ridden with or ridden next to at a ride mostly trot, so this seems to be true.  I see not alot of cantering and it's been discussed at great lengths here, trot vs. canter.

 

heidi

 

heidi@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> > We find that our horses who work almost entirely on sand, and deep sand
> > at that, prefer the canter or the walk as gaits in the desert. Trot is
> > ok if we can find a packed surface like one of the roads created by the
> > illegal sand miners and/or antiquities miners.
>
> Contrary to the impression given by the modern USA Arabian show ring, the
> canter IS the primary distance gait of the Arabian originally, and the
> trot is not fast or high. To quote Albert Harris (written in 1944, prior
> to the move by American breeders to alter the breed to follow the show
> ring fads):
>
> "[He] can take his rider over any kind of country and go on indefinitely. 
> His endurance is proverbial. He is an easy horse to sit on. His gaits
> are so smooth and elastic one does not grow fatigued. This, no doubt, is
> accounted for by the fact that he does not lift his
>  feet high or pound the
> ground. He is a good walking horse and has a nice trot, at which he
> merely lifts his feet high enough to clear the ground, and his canter, or
> gallop, is low, but smooth and graceful. As to his speed, again using
> average figures--as all horses are not alike--his fastest gait is, of
> course, the extended gallop. At this he is swift, sure-footed, and
> tireless. Extended, many Arabs can go a mile in under two minutes. His
> trot is smooth and easy to sit, as are all his gaits, but he is not a fast
> trotting horse, nor a high stepper. Some can move along at from ten to
> twelve miles an hour, but the average rate of speed of the Arab at the
> trot will be from seven to ten miles. His walk is very good. Four and
> one-half miles per hour is not unusual, and five this writer has often
> made."
>
> This sure doesn't sound like a desert horse that trotted everywhere--a
> good, groundcovering, efficient trot, yes, but clearly a horse
>  that
> cantered quite a bit when asked to move out, too. The observation that
> sand may be more readily traversed at a canter is apparently something the
> Bedouins also knew, and they bred their horses accordingly.
>
> Heidi
>
>
>
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