Early development of gait asymmetries in trotting Standardbred colts

Abstract

Summary Ten trotting Standardbred colts were recorded by high‐speed cinematography at the ages of eight, 12 and 18 months. The horses were trotting on a treadmill operating at 4.0 m/secs. Five horses were subjected to a programme of intensified training from eight months of age, whereas the others were not trained and acted as controls. The films were analysed on a semi‐automatic film‐reading equipment and a number of variables used to demonstrate the gait symmetry were calculated and scaled by computer. Certain differences between left and right diagonal and contralateral pair of limbs, respectively, were noted, suggesting that laterality in horses may be inherited. The most pronounced systematic differences were found in 18‐month old horses in the trained group. The results show the importance of careful gait examination and comprehensive coordination training at an early age.

Adaptation Strategies of Horses with Lameness

“…Temporal stride variables, when considered on their own, are of questionable value in detecting lameness: first, mild lamenesses do not show significant temporal deviations from the sound stride pattern, and, second, key parameters, such as StD or the time of diagonal advanced placement maintain their left-to-right symmetry with increasing lameness [30,59,73,74,84]. Temporal asymmetry is more commonly attributed to an individual locomotor pattern, also known as sidedness, handedness, or laterality [85,86]. Temporal parameters characterizing the airborne phase of the trot, such as contralateral step duration and SpD, change asymmetrically with increasing lameness [30,59,73].…”

Horses do not exhibit motor bias when their balance is challenged

“…The prevalence of right-handedness in humans, described across many cultures for thousands of years, is suggested to be evidence of the inherent nature of motor bias (Wilson, 1885;Dennis, 1958;Uhrbrock, 1973). Also, a study into young horses found they did exhibit motor bias in stride characteristics (Drevemo et al, 1987), and minimally handled horses were found to exhibit bias in favoured foreleg to initiate movement, direction of obstacle avoidance and rolling (Murphy et al, 2005).…”

“…Even with the extensive research of motor bias in humans, there are no clearly defined conventions for defining, testing or measuring handedness (Elliot and Roy, 1996), and a similar situation exists in the far fewer motor bias studies of horses. Some examples of the tests of motor bias used in past studies of horses include the advanced forelimb during grazing (McGreevy and Rogers, 2005;McGreevy and Thomson, 2006), lead stride pattern preference (Deuel and Lawrence, 1987;Williams and Norris, 2007), trotting gait asymmetries (Drevemo et al, 1987), and preferred foreleg to initiate movement at walk and trot, obstacle avoidance and rolling (Murphy et al, 2005). It is likely that because these tests vary (some considerably) in ways of measuring bias, they measure different characteristics of motor bias and therefore will result in conflicting conclusions as to the existence, degree and/or direction of motor bias.…”

“…Some studies of young horses suggest that horses are born biased (Drevemo et al, 1987), whereas others have shown young horses to be more unbiased compared to older horses (McGreevy and Rogers, 2005), suggesting bias is not an inherent trait. Although motor bias has been found to increase with age in those horses that were biased (McGreevy and Rogers, 2005), there were more ambidextrous horses than biased ones, and whether the training of these horses emphasised ambidexterity through equal work to the left and right is unclear.…”

Quantification of the Locomotion of Dutch Warmblood Foals

“…Heavier foals had longer stride lengths, and foals with greater height and length measurements relied more on stride frequency to increase velocity. Drevcmo et al [8] found an asymme try in the locomotion of 10 Standardbrcd colts recorded at the age of 8. 12 and 18 months.…”