Sage Fox Trots!

SAGE, the Fox Trotting Fool
or
Yes Virginia, there really is a Fox Trotting GOD

4/16/98

How did it happen? I have many theories and so do others. One day late last winter, Sage and I were out riding around the neighborhood. It was muddy and I had to go back to where I left something while I was riding her. I looked at her tracks and just stood frozen in awe. Her hoofs fell on top of each other. I could see the big word in my mind with little flags waving all over…CAPPING. She had capped her front feet tracks with her back feet tracks. I wrote all my friends and asked could this be fox trotting. Can a fox trotter cap her feet and do a running walk? The highest expert said “yes”. Another asked me how it felt…did I feel that gentle bob bob from the back that would mean a trot with the back feet. I was not certain. After 3 years of trying, one can’t just leap to immediate conclusions.

I worried my farrier to death. I was certain that her toes were too long, her toes were too sloped, instead of going straight down, and her angles were too low. I whined, I attacked, I was pitiful. I subscribed to a farrier magazine.

Sage has been rode and lounged over every piece of uneven ground and up every grassy hill that exists in my corner of Cass and Jackson County Missouri. She trots over poles in her sleep. I’d say her back muscles have been DEVELOPED!

Sage has not been rode much in a bridle. She has not been artifially “collected” or put “on the bit”. Her collection has developed very naturally. I “collect” or work on a soft feel…which is finger by finger tighten the reins so that her nose gives. It is the Parelli theory that a horse doesn’t need to have a bit jammed in their mouth with reins held hard to fox trot. Instead of being “on the bit”, a horse needs to be collected. These are two different concepts. It is Sage’s responsibility, with help from her rider, to learn how to hold herself in a “collected frame”.