THE TROT FOR TRACTION 305 



quite another thing. A wild horse may now and then 

 jog — i.e., go a short trot ; but he will be quite as apt to 

 pace, and if he is slowing down from a gallop to a walk 

 he is much more apt to rack, because the rack is more 

 nearly intermediate, in the sequence of feet, between 

 gallop and walk than is the trot. This fact is not gen- 

 erally known, because most people do not recognize a rack 

 when they see it. 



I refrain for the moment from going into the tech- 

 nicalities of the sequence of the horse's feet in the 

 various gaits ; but if any one will study this thing from 

 practice and from instantaneous photography, he will 

 see that the true trot is less allied to the one gait every 

 one acknowledges to be natural — the gallop — than the 

 rack. 



As I said, for drawing loads the trot is the thing, be- 

 cause a horse is using two feet at a time, and is by so 

 much stronger ; but if you want the neat, quick, crisp ac- 

 tion which alone makes the highest saddle qualities, you 

 call for a style of going to which the rack is naturally 

 adapted, while the trot is not. A single illustration will 

 serve to show my point. If you are cantering at a good 

 rate along the highway and want to slacken speed — as to 

 allow a carriage to pass across your path, or for any other 

 purpose — you cannot pull down to a trot and start into a 

 canter again without a distinct interruption of gaits — a 

 bumping, to be plain about it. But you can pull down to 

 a rack, and bound out again into a canter, without the 

 slightest perceptible change of the horse's rhythmic move- 

 ment. Or, again, if from a lively canter you pull down to 

 a w^alk through a trot, you have a certain amount of bump- 

 ing while the horse is jogging ; but if you teach your nag 

 to come back to a walk through a rack — i.e., from canter 

 to rack, and from rack to walk, you have not the remotest 



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