The “Trollop”
--> When is a canter not a canter? When it’s a trollop . That’s the name I’ve jokingly given to the sad, four-beat excuse for a canter so many people seem to think is the same as collection. Most people think of canter as the gait that comes between trot and gallop. When you add a fourth beat to the normally three beat gait, it’s something of a trot-gallop; in other words, a trollop . Slow like a trot, four beat like a gallop, but definitely doesn’t qualify as a proper canter. You see, by definition, canter has three beats and three beats only . When what you are seeing no longer has three beats, it can no longer be a canter. So what else is it, besides very, very wrong? And yet you see many riders, especially in hunter/jumpers and disturbing disciplines like western pleasure, where people seem to strive for this monstrous hybrid on purpose. I know! Why would anyone do such a thing? I have to think (and this may be g...