Musical notation for the canter is shown in Figure 1. It should be no surprise to learn that Figure 1a debunks the idea that the canter is a “three-beat” gait. The canter is instead a four-beat gait, each bar of its music consisting of three sounded beats plus one unsounded beat (Figures 2 and 4). The unsounded beat — the period of suspension, during which the horse flies through the air with no foot in contact with the ground — is extremely important and here is why: There is only one such moment in each bar of canter music, whereas in each bar of trot music, there are two.

Horses that pseudo-trot often have abnormally shaped feet, and as a result, tend to have soundness issues that limit their useful lives and/or competitive careers. They thus typically require more farrier skill than the naturally sound horse.