48 HACKS AND HUNTERS 



In a small percentage of five-gaited horses the running 

 walk is substituted by the slow pace, or fox-trot. 



There is no denying that at these artificial gaits the 

 Kentucky horse is extremely easy to ride, and we have 

 no quarrel with the old-fashioned Southerner who 

 claims for his horse the easiest paces in all the world. 

 In the rack, for example, there is scarcely any motion 

 of the rider's body, and one could almost ride to a 

 dinner or a dance in one's evening clothes, without 

 danger of being in the least rumpled up or overheated. 

 One can then scarcely blame the Southerner for at one 

 time rather pitying Englishmen for indulging in so 

 uncomfortable a gait as a trot.* 



These comfortable artificial gaits, however, are ex- 

 tremely difficult to keep pure and free from mixing, and 

 unless the horse is always ridden by an expert — and 

 sometimes even then — they degenerate into a horrible 

 hodgepodge of mixed gaits. Even when performed at 

 its best, I do not think that the rack or running walk 

 can be considered anything but a rather ugly and un- 

 gainly gait to look at. Nevertheless, there is no doubt 

 that, as a five-gaited animal, the Kentucky horse is 

 very popular in some sections of the country, as is 

 readily evidenced by the huge prices paid for good 

 specimens of the kind, as well as by the enormous 

 crowds he draws at exhibitions in the South, where he 

 competes for colossal stakes. It would, therefore, be 

 extremely narrow-minded to condemn flat-footedly a 

 horse so popular in the South because he does not 



* At one time the trot was called "Le trot Anglais," inasmuch as 

 the Continental, the Arab, as well as all horsemen of the Orient always 

 either walked or galloped; the Southerner racked or single-footed; the 

 Westerner loped on his cow-pony, and it was only the English, who 

 to-day rarely ride at any other gait but a canter, who trotted and 

 originated "rising" to the trot as we know that gait to-day. 





