Excerpt from Craig's upcoming book on Classical Riding...

"The gaits are the music and poetry of the horse’s movement. They are the foundation of the art. From the 19th century, largely as a result of the developments in military equitation, the trot has become increasingly the gait preferred for the training of the horse. Historically there have been other ways of using the gaits in training....

The gaits for horses have nothing to do with human verbal distinctions. The horse walks, trots, or canters because he feels like it. And horses don’t just respond to emotions through the gaits, the gaits are the emotions.

... With a horse, not only does he move because his emotions pick up, but as the horse moves faster and faster, there is more and more emotion. The difficulty in the canter, for example, is that the horse is excited by the gait itself. He is less excited in the trot, and even less by the walk.

...with some horses, the canter will create more excitement than can be controlled. So, in deciding when and how much walk, trot or canter to undertake with a given horse in training your guidance is found in the nature of the horse you are working with. It’s important to avoid placing the horse in a situation in which the rider can not control the horse’s emotions with the aids, especially in the early stages of training. If the horse figures out that he’s stronger and faster than you are, you’ve got a real problem. As the language of the aids deepens through training it becomes possible to take on emotional states with higher energy. Eventually the rider should be able to confront any situation and the aids will hold."

copyright Craig Stevens and Mary Anne Campbell 2010