The walk is not just a “warm-up,” something the rider has to tolerate or endure because she’s read that muscles and joints have to be warmed up before the big athletic effort – the “real” riding – can begin.

Certainly, it’s foolish to take the horse straight out of the barn and demand that it work fast and hard without a preliminary warm-up. It doesn’t matter whether that would be before breezing at the track, jumping, pulling a vehicle, running barrels, making time on the road, cutting cattle or performing extended trot or sequence flying changes.

Some riders consider the walk to be “boring,” but if that’s the attitude, they are missing out on all the potentials that make the walk the most important training gait, so much so that it dwarfs all that can be accomplished at any other gait.

Practice at the walk makes precision riding possible. It also protects…