164 ROAD, TRACK, AND STABLE. 
The modern Kentucky saddle horses are taught the 
following gaits: —(1.) The flat-footed walk, or ordi- 
nary walk. (2.) The running walk. (3.) The amble. 
(4.) The rack or single foot. (5.) The trot. (6.) The 
canter. (7.) The gallop. 
The running walk is simply the ordinary walk ac- 
celerated. An ambitious colt ridden toward home, 
kept back from a faster gait, but urged to walk more 
speedily, will gradually fall into it. The action is 
more springy and pronounced than that of the ordi- 
nary walk, but mechanically it is the same. The 
sensation it transmits to the saddle is a very slight 
up and down motion. A Kentucky horse will run- 
ning-walk at the rate of five or five anda half miles 
an hour, and keep it up all day without fatigue to 
himself or to the rider. 
The amble is a slow pace, both near feet leaving 
the ground and returning to it simultaneously, fol- 
lowed by both off feet also moving together. The 
amble is a gait of about four and a half miles per 
hour, and it communicates to the saddle a slight 
rocking motion. 
In the rack or single foot the feet follow each other 
at equal intervals (or half-intervals), there being twice 
as many hoof-beats as there would be at a trot or pace 
of the same speed. In other words, the two near feet 
do not strike the ground together, as in a pace, but at 
regular intervals. The sound of the footfalls is one, 
two, three, four, instead of one, two, as it would be in 
the same period of time at a pace. This is the smooth- 
est of all gaits. “You are sitting in an arm-chair,” 
remarks Colonel T. A. Dodge, to whom I am indebted 
for these particulars, “at a speed of from seven to fif- 
