Canter

The canter and gallop are variations on the fastest gait that can be performed by a horse or other equine. The canter is a controlled, three-beat gait, while the gallop is a faster, 4 beat variation of the same gait. It is a natural gait possessed by all horses, faster than most horses' trot, or ambling gaits. The gallop is the fastest gait of the horse, averaging about 40 to 48 kilometres per hour (25 to 30 mph). The speed of the canter varies between 16 and 27 kilometres per hour (10 and 17 mph) depending on the length of the stride of the horse. A variation of the canter, seen in western riding, is called a lope, and generally is quite slow, no more than 13–19 kilometres per hour (8–12 mph).

Since the earliest dictionaries there has been a commonly agreed suggestion that the origin of the word "canter" comes from the English city of Canterbury, a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages, as referred to in The Canterbury Tales, where the comfortable speed for a pilgrim travelling some distance on horseback was above that of a trot but below that of a gallop. However the lack of the compelling evidence made the 18th-century equestrian Richard Berenger remark in The History and Art of Horsemanship that "the definition must certainly puzzle all who are horsemen and all who are not" [author's italics], and suggest his own derivation, noted in contemporary dictionaries, from the Latin word cantherius, a gelding, known of the calmness of the temper.

The canter is a three-beat gait, meaning that there are three footfalls heard per stride. Each footfall is the "grounding" phase of a leg. The three footfalls are evenly spaced, and followed by the "suspension" phase of the gait, which is when all four legs are off the ground. The three beats and suspension are considered one stride. The movement for one stride is as follows:

The canter and gallop are related gaits, as the rider simply asks the horse to gallop from the canter by allowing it to lengthen its stride. When the stride is sufficiently lengthened, the diagonal pair of beat two breaks, resulting in a four beat gait, the inside hind striking first, before the outside fore. A careful listener or observer can tell an extended canter from a gallop by the presence of the fourth beat.

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