Hoofprints!

For any of you out there who still think the gait of the Tennessee Walking Horse is a contrived, man-made gait, here is the awesome truth! Please take note of the illustration below. On the left are tracks, hoofprints, of modern horses doing the walk, trot and running walk. On the right are fossilized tracks of three Hipparion equids, early ancestors of the horse, made 3.5 MILLION years ago. Side by side we have the Hipparion horse and a moderm Walking horse doing the running walk. The tracks are almost identical! The running walk is as natural a gait as your own  See for yourself.

This inllustration is from Stephen Budiansky's The Nature of Horses, The Free Press, 1997, p. 25.

There is a detailed description and analysis of the gaits beginning on page 192.