BFO = Blinding Flash of the Obvious.\u00a0 We horse people have them every now and then. That’s why our foreheads often get dented. Check out\u00a0 my forehead the next time you see me.\u00a0 Does it have a dent?<\/p>\n
Warning:\u00a0 Non horse people and horse people with non-gaited horses are going to find this exceedingly dull. Gaited horse people are going to hang on every word and probably not breathe until I run out of words.<\/p>\n
I have an IQ over 100.\u00a0 I’ve been understanding why the dog walk is so good for gaited horses.\u00a0 Let me tell you:\u00a0 It builds up the muscles that the gaited horse needs to gait. It increases their stride. An increased stride at the faster gaits makes us humans smile bigger and smoother!<\/p>\n
I understand what it looks like:\u00a0 The human’s stomach area is\u00a0rocked forward and backward.\u00a0 It looks like it hurts.\u00a0 And it’s not what I would describe as comfortable.<\/p>\n
About 100 years ago, Jenny told me that she developed her champion Tennessee Walking Horse’s stride over the winter by having him do a dog walk.\u00a0 Doing that for a long winter wore out a pair of Jenny’s pants and increased his stride by a whopping long amount.\u00a0 I’ve always remembered that.<\/p>\n
When I had JR, I could never get him to dog walk.\u00a0 I gave up in about 5 minutes or anytime Jenny’s back was turned. We sped up into the wonderful smooth flat foot walk.<\/p>\n
With Nova, every now and then I can accidentally get a dog walk.\u00a0 I try and fool Jenny all the other times and then try to speed up into the flat foot walk any time I can get away with it in a lesson.<\/p>\n
After all, the dog walk is slow, it’s uncomfortable and I couldn’t get it. What better reasons do you want?\u00a0 I want to go fast with that wonderful gaited horse’s rhythmic gaits.\u00a0 I love speeds up to a gallop!<\/p>\n
At the recent\u00a0gaited horse clinic with Jenny and Tony Vaught, again I got to hear about why the dog walk was so important.\u00a0 I tried to care and I did for a while.<\/p>\n
I went for a trail ride on Velvet last Saturday. Velvet has spent two years with the Vaughts.\u00a0 Her stride is a lot longer than it was the last time I was riding her.\u00a0 On the trail, we went on a fast dogwalk for about the entire distance.\u00a0 It was fast and her stride was long.\u00a0 Amazing, I thought!\u00a0 This is why her fox trot stride has increased.<\/p>\n
Tonight I rode Nova.\u00a0 I learned how to get her to dog walk! This is incredible.\u00a0 She has to put her head down, relax and walk faster than a real walk and not as fast as a flat foot walk.<\/p>\n
WOW!<\/p>\n
So, tonight Nova and I practiced patterns at the dog walk. She was pretty surprised to have the evening end without her\u00a0doing her faster gaits.<\/p>\n
It’s all about feel. Tonight I felt it and understood it.\u00a0 I am “one with the dog walk”!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BFO = Blinding Flash of the Obvious.\u00a0 We horse people have them every now and then. That’s why our foreheads often get dented. Check out\u00a0 my forehead the next time you see me.\u00a0 Does it have a dent? Warning:\u00a0 Non horse people and horse people with non-gaited horses are going to find this exceedingly dull. Gaited horse people are going to hang on every word and probably not breathe until I run out of words. I have an IQ over 100.\u00a0 I’ve been understanding why the dog walk is so…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[84,4,5],"class_list":["post-1485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nova","tag-dog-walk","tag-missouri-fox-trotter","tag-nova-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1485"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1487,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1485\/revisions\/1487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mofoxtrot.com\/viewpoint\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}