(“Any movement even if it’s quick is better than no movement.”)

“Your trot is too fast.” “Your trot is too slow.” One clinician says to slow down. Another says to speed up. Who’s right? Whose advice do you follow and why? Before we get too deeply into this, some definitions: we use the sequence of the foot falls to define the horse’s gait. This we call rhythm. For instance, any horse moving its legs with alternate diagonal pairs is said to be trotting. The rhythm may be flawed as in a four beat canter or a lateral walk, but the order in which the legs move still defines the gait. A second topic is tempo–the rate at which the sequence of footfalls repeats itself – essentially the speed at which the legs move. Note that this is different from the speed at which the horse is moving over the ground. In working trot and medium trot the tempo is supposed to be identical, but because the strides are longer in medium, the horse will be moving faster in miles per hour then he would be in the working gait.

Based on his conformation and movement, each horse will have an individual best tempo for each of his gaits, a tempo which is most visually pleasing to an observer. Beyond that each horse will have a small range of acceptable tempos in each gait suitable to show the judge without drawing a “hurried” or “sluggish” comment.

When you are schooling and not competing, you have a few more options. One determining factor is your horse’s temperament. I usually make a lazy horse go in a slightly faster tempo than the one he chooses. And with a hot horse, I try to take a few RPMs off the tempo he wants to go in. It’s always a good idea for the horse to know who’s in charge and whose idea the tempo is. And horses should learn that within each gait there are multiple tempos and multiple lengths of stride. You may have heard the old joke that with beginner school horses the aids to go from walk to trot are “Shorten the reins,” and the aids to go from trot to canter are “Go a little faster.” We’d like to think that our dressage approach to riding is a little more sophisticated than that!

The other factor is the horse’s natural way of going. If a horse is tense and tight, schooling him in a slower than normal tempo may allow the pinwheels swirling in his head to slow down as well. Some hot horses also rush forward with no grasp of the concept of being in front of the leg. By slowing the tempo, you can teach the horse to wait for the pushing aids and learn to reach into the bridle from behind.

Alternatively, picture a horse short-strided horse who moves with little engagement or shoulder freedom. While an end goal is to encourage elastic strides and a swinging back, in the short run he simply must learn to articulate his joints and swing his limbs. As with an invalid who has been confined to his bed for too long, any movement even if it’s quick is better than no movement. As he learns to reach up into his prints, the horses tempo can be adjusted downward later on.

You can see why one clinician not familiar with a horse’s background or privy to another trainer’s decision-making process might give out different advice than his predecessor. In the long run, it all comes down to what the horse looks like as he moves, how the chosen tempo affects the other qualities of his movement, and how it affects his state of mind.