i dont see how you can just go by "four clear beats" "four even beats" etc. I tried for years. For one thing, a hard pace is four distinct beats if they are going fast and you mistake the two distinct patterns for one. So is a trot for that matter. I finally found a pattern in my jaspars stepping pace on a hard road, and if you know what I am talking about, it is EXACTLY like the beat in the song "happy trails to you" only more lively. sort of a one---pause--- twothreefour one--pause--twothreefour. But my stonewall saddleracks and when he goes down a hard packed road or pavement it sounds for all the world just as clear pocka pocka pocka pocka four beat as four beat can get. and I have had old timers behind me on the trail say "your horse has about a square a four beat gait I have ever seen on a walking horse" and he is saddle racking (slow tolt) and walking horse people generaly describe a clean four beat gait as a runningwalk. So whoever says a clean perfectly even 4 beat gait is a rack, then how can people say the same thing about a runningwalk?? there is just no way you can tell it by ear. maybe Liz graves can but she would be about it I would think since she is about a hundred years beyond anybody who knows anything about gait in the US, which actually puts the rest of the world to shame in gait knowlege... janice
-- yipie tie yie yo
