The American Saddle-bred is an intelligent, spirited and highly athletic breed. All Saddlebreds are capable of walk, trot and canter and some, in addition, can “slow gait” and rack. But what is a rack? What is a “slow gait”? Changes have occurred over the past century in the way all five gaits are presented. For my research, I have combed through hundreds of historical photos. Some are so damaged by the vicissitudes of time or the shortcomings of the printing process that, to bring them to readers, I have had no choice but to convert them to color paintings. Nonetheless, in creating these—like all the others I have presented in this series concerning the history of American horsemanship—I have scrupulously preserved factual content. Since the date associated with most of these images is known, along with the foaling dates of the horses pictured, it isn’t difficult to arrange them to form a time sequence.
If only a few images were available, change over time in the way horses are expected to move would inevitably appear abrupt, since there would be relatively long gaps, but in this case a very full sequence is available. What it documents is that, while there was a slow evolution in what was judged to be championship form between the 1870s when the first “stop motion” or “instantaneous” photography begins, and 1930, it is nothing by comparison to the changes that occurred during the 1930s, a decade which marks the watershed between what may be termed “old style” and “modern style” Saddle Seat technique.
The number one reason for these changes was loss of knowledge among horse owners and trainers. Several factors lie behind this, most importantly the coming of the automobile and motorized farm equipment, a trend which began in the teens of the century and was essentially universal by 1935, by which time the overall horse population in the U.S. had dropped by over 50 percent from a high in 1919. The displacement of horses began with motorized tractors, combines and harvesters, trucks, buses and automobiles, but the final blow came with the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, which combined to make owning a horse for pleasure riding or showing a privilege reserved for the wealthy.
The world view of a younger generation that had grown up riding not horses but bicycles led to a population exodus from farm to city, with young men seeking careers involving things that go upon wheels instead of creatures that go upon legs. Even the great Tom Bass (see “A Great American Horseman,” EQUUS 504) could not get his son interested in a career as a horse trainer; all the boy wanted was cars and trains. Unfortunately Bass’s experience was far from unique. He passed his knowledge on to students such as John Hook, who went on to a great career and who in turn taught others. Henri Lucian de Bussigny, trained at Saumur, brought knowledge of the French school to these shores in the 1870s and likewise shared it. During the Civil War and earlier, the officer training program at West Point approved of Baucher’s techniques and taught them to future officers. Other examples could certainly be cited, but the passing-on of equestrian knowledge requires much close interaction between master and apprentice and (as we all know) even then is not always entirely successful. It’s like a game of “telephone” in which the original message tends to become corrupted or diluted as it is transmitted from one speaker to the next.
Those who hear the message the clearest and can reproduce it with fidelity are acknowledged as the most talented trainers and riding instructors, but even in the best of times such people are few, and when horse numbers dropped and horse showing dried up during the 1930s, older, deeper and more humane training protocols went to the grave with an older generation. They were eclipsed by “quick and dirty” methods made necessary by the fact that more horses were being handled by fewer trainers. Working alone, even the fittest and most eager trainer can manage to get only half a dozen or so horses ridden each day. Apprentices and assistants who tack and groom the animals and warm them up can expand this to a dozen or more. Trainers—especially those who were not the most knowledgeable or talented—began to look to weighted shoes and boots, bitting
