Horses for Life

August 2007 • VOLUME 24 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine

Many horsemen are well aware of how complicated the walk truly is. How as a trainer it can be the most difficult gait to train correctly, and how quickly a good walk can be ruined.

The walk, with its lateral and diagonal components, with the horse going from a base of two to three feet on the ground at any one time, the one gait with no suspension, it also becomes one of the most difficult gaits to know how to aid properly.

Aids are not commands that once inputed to a device such as a computer will be followed automatically. When you tell the computer that it is time to close and shut down it usually does not matter what is open, the computer shuts down. Not so for the horse.

Aids can only be as successful as the timing of the aid. An aid given at the right time might be successful, but an aid given at the wrong time means that you have set up yourself and your horse up for failure. This is true of any gait, but is probably the most difficult to apply correctly in the complicated walk.

As an example if we look at the picture below we can see how at this moment in time it would be impossible for the horse to react to any aid to influence the right hind considering the moment in time displayed. We could push, whip or spur, no matter the strength of the aid, there a certain moments in time where the aid just will not work.

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