It's even stranger to think that I've been reading and writing fanfiction for eighteen years, starting on sites like Gametalk. ICrafty's Footwork · 5:08pm Feb 26th, 2020
Horses are not naturally left-footed or right-footed. One front foot must land before the other, and horses choose which foot comes first. The faster a horse moves, the easier they can change leads. It's a little counter-intuitive, and hard to recognize in videos. They naturally have four movement speeds, called "gaits." Many so-called experts mistakenly call these *three gaits.*
Walk
Trot
Canter
Gallop
Canter and gallop are very similar, but there is a timing and speed difference. I won't get into the nitty-gritty specifics.
If they lead with the right foot, horses turn sharper to the right. If they lead with the left, they turn sharper to the left. That's for sharp turns. If they want to do a "rollback," also called an "about-face," or a "180 degree turn," they must perform opposite footwork. For example: a left lead about-face requires the horse to turn right, and switch to right lead. Vice versa: a right lead about-face requires the horse to turn left, and switch to left lead. This is essentially like stopping a motorcycle on a wheelie and spinning it around.
(this "rollback" turn is used to control herds, escape threats, impress crowds, and initiate precise circles around barrels)
Horses can also choose which back foot lands before the other back foot, giving them numerous "transition options." Sub-optimum riders can train horses to muck this up, resulting in horses who only turn sharply to the left, but never to the right.
Cowboys, dressage riders, cavalrymen, and most knights were aware of this. But it wasn't until the 20th century that terms were invented to describe any of it. Good riders learned instinctively to feel and understand the timing of their horse's gaits, but few could explain these details. Suboptimum riders got by and made do. Bad riders ruined horses. Bad habits propagate longer than good ones.
My mother was raised in Oklahoma. She grew up watching my grandpa work on the Wildlife Refuge, where he'd wrangle buffalo from horseback. Even though grandpa's been gone from the Refuge for over thirty years, employees there still call him the best cowboy they ever had. My mom learned well, and then she found better teachers. She rode in rodeos from high school to college, and won more than her fair share of them. Her passion in life was training horses, identifying bad habits, and improving with every ride. She was also a talented artist, which explains me.
I took up the torch of mom's artwork. My little sister took up horses. Under mom's tutelage, on a horse that mom raised from birth, my sister blazed trails through Texas' rodeo communities. Mom, sister, and their horse were always up against rich folks with hyper-expensive horses, which were generally trained by hired professionals. Many rodeos were won by terrible riders with deep pockets. While my mom and sister worked hard to keep their horse in good, healthy shape, other families were buying new horses every year. And just as often, those families destroyed their expensive horses through bad riding. My mom could have been one of the professional trainers, but she hated to see good training ruined by spoiled brats.
My sister never cared about horses or rodeos as much as mom did. She enjoyed school and many extracurricular activities. At several points, mom nearly banned my sister from riding when she wouldn't correct bad habits. Despite these distractions, my sister was so talented, and so well-trained, that she made it into the Top 10 young rodeo riders in Texas. In 2012 she made it into the Internationals. My parents drove her halfway up the country to participate in Team West, which included the best young riders from Australia. Sadly, nobody on Team West came prepared for the "competition."
Team East (so named because they came from the east coast of the U.S.) was comprised almost entirely of boys and girls who could afford the very best. On the east coast, good land is rare and expensive. Membership in equine clubs is also expensive. That means that most members of Team East were as rich as the spoiled brats that my sister left in the Texas dust. In that money-driven environment, competitions weren't friendly. They were cut-throat, even combative.
Few on Team West understood why every Team East trailer had posted guards. My mom and sister never suspected a thing.
The night before my sister's big event, dozens of Team West horses were poisoned in their trailers. That morning, some horses were too sick and addled to compete. Some of the simpler-minded members of Team West blamed each other, even though they were on the same team. As far as we know, not a single Team East horse was poisoned. Their heads remained high, their eyes clear, and their gaits excited. No investigations occurred during the competition.
My sister's horse had champion blood in her veins. Her pedigree represented years of accumulated winnings from my mom's rodeo career, paired with all the connections and friendships she'd made, resulting in a horse worth more than our house. Her athletic build was perfectly matched to my sister's stature. Her cunning and agility were perfect matches for her name: Crafty.
Crafty was among those horses poisoned in the night. She even had a syringe lump on her neck. But she was still determined to compete. She loved to compete even more than my sister did. She loved the rodeo crowds. She loved running barrels, weaving through poles, and working cattle. She was supremely agile, and well-acclimated to every ground condition. She worked well in mud, gravel, sand, grass, and every kind of soil. She'd had a few minor injuries over the years, but mom always got her diagnosed, so Crafty always came back stronger.
At the Internationals in 2012, the ground of the arena wasn't good dirt. It was clay. On the first day of competition it was so hardened that the plow barely scratched it. It wasn't good ground to run horses on, but everyone made do. Then it rained, and turned that clay into mud. The day Crafty woke up poisoned, that muddy clay was plowed again. And this time, the idiots who tended the arena plowed it too deep. It made the ground risky for good riders on good horses, never mind bad riders and drugged horses. Dozens of horses were injured in that thick clay stew, including some from Team East.
That day, in that cheap clay mud, my sister rode Crafty magnificently. Crafty, despite being drugged, rose from her stupor to try her hardest. But on that day in 2012, Crafty was too drugged (and the ground was too muddy). She failed to change her lead foot during a sharp turn. Something tore in her leg. Her structural support was gone, but she couldn't feel it because she was drugged. And she kept racing hard. She made good time. She ran so hard, in fact, that she threw her back out during the final turn.
She still didn't qualify for the next round. EDIT: My sister informed me that Crafty veered and bumped two barrels. That's a major time penalty. END EDIT When the drugs in her system wore off, she was in such pain that she went into shock.
Crafty never recovered. Her leg remained screwed up, so her back could never fully heal. She still wanted to compete, but it caused her agony. My mom and sister couldn't afford to go on, and decided it was time for my sister to focus on college. They quit rodeos. Eventually, they made Crafty a mother of two fine horses. A few years ago, they finally had to put Crafty to sleep.
I came into this expecting interesting horse facts. I did not expect a tale of horror across the class divide. My belated condolences.
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Hopefully you got some interesting horse facts as well. I plan on asking my mom and sister about horse footwork soon, so I can write about my Awakened warhorse in Dungeons & Dragons. It'd be nice to assemble a theoretical framework for equine combat, based on the principles of real equine footwork.