Comparison of the stride kinematics of the collected, medium, and extended walks in horses.

The study investigated stride kinematics, or the characteristics of a horse’s steps, comparing collected, medium, and extended walks in dressage competition horses. The researchers found variations in stride speed, length, duration, and angles of limb segments in different types of walks.

Methodology

• The study involved six horses that are highly trained for dressage competition.
• Using a filming rate of 150 frames per second, the horses were filmed in the sagittal plane, which divides the body into right and left halves, during collected, medium, and extended walks.
• Temporal, linear, and angular data were extracted from the films for analysis, including stride speed, stride length, stride duration, and angles of the metacarpophalangeal and metatarsophalangeal segments when the horse’s hoof hits the ground and lifts off.

Findings

• The research revealed that the speed of the collected walk was significantly slower than the medium and extended walks. The collected walk averaged a speed of 1.37 metres per second (m/s) compared to the medium (1.73 m/s) and extended (1.82 m/s) walks.
• The increment in walk speed was paired with an increase in stride length, which went from 157 cm in the collected walk to 193 cm in the extended walk. This extension was due to an increase in the over-tracking distance, the distance by which the hind foot overlaps and places in front of the print of the front foot, not by an increase in the distance between lateral placements of the limbs.
• The duration of the stride was also affected, decreasing significantly from the collected walk (1159 milliseconds) to the extended walk (1064 milliseconds).
• The angles of the metacarpal (front limb) and metatarsal (hind limb) segments were higher at impact and lower at lift off in the collected walk, implying a greater range of motion in these segments during the extended walk.
• Out of all six horses, only one maintained a regular 4-beat rhythm of the footfalls with equal time between lateral and diagonal footfalls.

Implications

• These findings could potentially help trainers in optimizing training and performance strategies for dressage horses by understanding how different techniques affect stride kinematics.
• The research could also be useful in the field of equine veterinary medicine, particularly in gait analysis and the management of lameness and other locomotion abnormalities in horses.