foxtrot

A type of diagonal, ambling horse gait consisting of slow, short and syncopated four-beat trotting, quicker than a walk, but often slower than a canter. At all times one of the horse’s front hooves must be touching the ground, while the alternating hind hooves hit the ground just before the diagonally opposite front hoof. The result is a sliding motion in the hind legs, rather than a lifting, that eliminates the moment of suspension and provides for a smoother ride.

The Missouri Fox Trotting Horse Breed Association reminds riders of the gait’s motto: “Style and Grace, It’s Not a Race!” Such style and grace is indicated by the horse keeping its head slightly elevated while exhibiting “the characteristic headshake” that falls in time with the hind hooves, and by rippling its tail to further accentuate the rhythm of the gait.

Works Cited "Standards of the Missouri Fox Trotting Horse." //Missouri Fox Trotting Horse Breed Association//. The Missouri Fox Trotting Horse Breed Association, n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2013.

//He was already halfway across the square when they saw him, on a big hard-ridden roan horse, man and beast looking as though they been created out of thin air and set down in the bright summer Sabbath sunshine in the middle of a tired **foxtrot**—face and horse that none of them had ever seen before, name that none of them had ever heard, and origin and purpose which some of them were never to learn.//

--AA (23-24)