Guest Blog Post # 40: "The Walk of (Your) Life" by Bill Woods

You hear a lot of contradictory advice about training the walk. One line of reasoning goes: Unlike the trot or canter, the walk has no natural impulsion to it. Without this willing self-motivation, the rider can easily introduce tension or restriction that's hard to get rid of. The solution—don't mess around in the walk very much. School in the other gaits.

You will also hear the polar opposite: Whatever the movement is, if you cannot do it slowly and with most of your horse's legs on the ground, how can you expect to do it going faster or when the suspension of the canter adds additional balance problems to the equation?

Recently I encountered a young horse with a magnificent walk—pure, free in the shoulder with a cat-like undulation through his topline, and a massive overstride. As a Free Walk it was worthy of a 10. How did it get that way? The answer—he was born with it. There is general agreement that other then ensuring the horse can march forward and find a receiving hand, there are not a lot of things you can do to improve the quality of a walk.

That's why they say "When buying a horse, always look for one with a good walk and a good canter. You can often improve the trot, but flaws in the other gaits are much harder to repair." Anne Gribbons goes one step further: "Since you can't improve it, your duty is to take the walk that nature gives the horse and not ruin it."

So what should a good walk feel like? Picture how your horse marches home towards the barn on a long rein as his dinner time approaches. Or this:

As a kid on summer vacations long ago I worked afternoons in the hay field on my girlfriend's family's farm. Throwing bales up onto the wagon was a hot, dusty, itchy job. A few miles away down a stretch of dirt road stood a country store. Within it, a freezer chest packed with Popsicles beckoned. By about 3:30, we couldn't stand the temptation any longer. Someone would pick an amiable horse from the pasture, clip a pair of leadropes to his halter, hop up bareback, and go for a paper sack of frozen treats. The trick was choose a decent Popsicle horse--one whose walk was energetic and ground-covering enough that the goods wouldn't have all melted by the time the courier got back! In the show ring make your horse like that in the free walk and your score will climb.

One last unrelated thought: the Medium Walk of Training Level can be relatively unsophisticated in terms of outline and connection without it reflecting badly in your marks. But all Medium Walks are not the same. By the time you are showing First (or especially Second) Level, the judge's expectation is much greater. Trying to make a turn on the haunches, a canter depart, or a rein back from a Training Level frame is not going to produce the reward you're looking for.