okay rolling good morning everybody um this is Walter so I wanted to make a just a real short video today to show you something kind of extraordinary so he is a registered Missouri Fox drer and all of you that have watched and followed the channel know I’ve trained hundreds of them and I’m not training Walter I’m just riding him today but out of all of the horses that I’ve had experience with he might be the fastest Missouri Fox trod um in his Gates that I’ve ever trained he’s definitely top three uh that I can think of over the
last 30 years and to know who’s the fastest I’d have to have him side by side so I wanted to show what makes him unique and what makes him so fast um it’s basically it comes down to overstride and I’ll explain to you what overstride is um just a little background why Walter’s here my friend Brian brazwell I’ve known him since we were little kids running around the hor shows together uh chasing girls I mean we’ve we’ve been friends since we’re a little bitty he’s over there yeah so he wanted to come down and trail ride with
me and as I’ve told you as I’m training my Young Horses I don’t ride them very hard I ride them a mile or so get off and walk and we go slower and try to stay off the downhill grades and stuff so we were wanting to really cover some miles so Brian brought an extra horse cuz I don’t really have anything that can take hard riding right now um but Walter you know he’s he’s in his early teens he’s in Primal life and he’s a big horse so I’m going to ride him today and he’s like riding a flying Magic Carpet
cuz he can cover the ground I wanted to show it because a lot of people don’t think a Missouri Fox trer can keep up with a Tennessee Walking Horse it’s just the opposite on a trail ride an average Fox Trotter can keep up with the fastest walking horse in my opinion especially if you know how to ride and Walter is not the average Fox strier he will leave anything behind that you want to take with him so overstride is how far so when you’re walking where this foot lands it’ll leave a hoofprint then this
foot will come and land about right here on the next stride and he really gets his back end tucked up under him as he travels so I’m going to show you that that’s just Walter’s walk everybody wow how he naturally goes May that back end up underneath him see right here look front foot landed right here on that stride back foot landed right there so we’ll get him going I’ll ride him and we’ll measure it you can see that back in really he really puts a lot of his weight on his back end and puts it up underneath
him that’s why he’s got his head naturally so high because he likes to have that back end up underneath him to go and he hasn’t been trained like that that’s just him that’s how he’s bred to travel come here buddy it’s okay and I want to show everybody point out he ain’t chod in any weird way at all this is just a normal Cowboy shoe that you would get from the hardware store from the farm farm and feed store just a lightweight shoe with a heel to keep him from slipping out and uh there’s nothing nothing
man-made or altered about this horse this is just how he is bred to go genetically the gate Walter is performing here meets the breed standard of the black foot walk so as you can see he went through this was where his front foot landed right here and so from the back and this is where the back toe landed so from the front of the back toe to the front of his front foot at 17 in over reach on a first take we have him warmed up or trying or lined out on a road he could do even better than that so his average
is centes of overreach in a walk see that front of the front toe and that’s front of the back toe there I think you can see the fot yeah okay now we’re going to show his second gate this is the fox drot and in his Fox Trot oddly enough he has less overreach he’s got 12 in of overreach in the Trot a’t that funny is interesting never when watching a fox truer travel and trying to decipher which gate it’s doing I suggest watching the back end more than the front end the front end shouldn’t change very much right here in slow motion you
can see that the back end is going from one stride to the other with no bounding in between them so he’s placing one foot down before lifting the other on the hind end that means he is doing a walk and here you can see where the front foot takes off and where the back foot lands it’s a good example and visual representation of overstride now watch for the subtle slight difference in the rear end you can kind of see how there’s a little bit of a bound or a little bit of a up and down motion to the transfer between the
left rear and the right rear that is a foxtrot it is just barely a Fox Trot it’s nearly a runand walk but Walter is a very big licked horse and he goes pretty smooth but if you’re riding it you can feel the rhythm you can see that Rhythm and the Shake in the tail as he takes each stride that’s the impact of the Trot okay we’ve made it to the trail riding spot and Brian has an app that is going to track our rate of travel like our average speed right yep the pace and uh then how many miles we go I’m
thinking we’ll probably go about seven or eight miles and we’ll probably maintain 8 8 mph 7 mph over that I bet which is flying for a trail ride and we brought STI along so she can have some fun today this is what it’s like riding Walter have a very loose grip on the rains he just keeps his head like that naturally it’s worth noting that his head isn’t actually that high it’s not blocking my view but today I wore the GoPro on a chest Mount instead of on my normal forehead Mount where you could have been able to see past
Walter this Conservation Area has about 100 miles of trails if I had to guess that you can ride and that’s all all open to horses and there’s spots to park your trailer and turn around your trailer and this is actually within riding distance of the farm sometimes I just ride here from my farm but the trail that comes here had a tornado and there’s about 50 trees across it and it’s a real pain to get around so today we drove [Music] you get to go out a pretty good clip and it’s very smooth as we go along today watch how
Walter’s headshake and neck are in rhythm with his stride in the gate mouri Fox shers do this to maximize efficiency in their gate s he having a ball okay just wanted to show you this awesome little spring coming out of the Hill here feeding this Creek and let the horses get a drink and unfortunately I got us 180° lost from where I wanted to go and I know where we’re at now and our truck is that way and we left going that way from the truck and never thought we turned around yet now we’re this way
from the truck so so much for me knowing my way huh Brian so much for it that’s crazy [Applause] okay this is this is called DeWit Springs it’s the head of Mill Creek last time I was here this road was closed so this is pretty nice said it’s open take you up and show you the lake in the springs that starts mil Creek in this area there’s mil Creek everywhere you go there’s something called mil Creek but this mil Creek is the only natural reproducing trout stream in Missouri so it had naturally reproducing stop uh
trout that they don’t know when they stocked them hundreds of years ago probably oh yeah they redid the creek crossing that’s that’s why it’s open now yeah made it you thirsty you can have a drink if you’re thirsty he got a drink at the last Creek Crossing and that that creek crossing right there is Upstream of the uh spring so it gets bigger once this spring pours into it we’ll show you the spring oh the pond dam isn’t there anymore wow that’s different so I guess the muskrats that ate away the pond dam and now this Creek
is here this did not used to be this way yep ho ho ho ho ho ho ran this Trail is is no longer here like it used to be the last time I was here so we’re not doing that over there where that Beaver Dam is there used to be an earth Dam that went all the way around this and you can see there over there the Earth Dam left there used to be a good Riding Trail all the way around it um but we’ll go over this way and see if we can find it yeah so this is dwit Springs the spring well the spring is up here
past where they had the mill and this is a lake or Pond it used to be a full pond but the muskrats like I said the muskrats and beavers have took out that b Dam over or the levy over there oh look at the are those decoys those are fake ain’t they that’s weird hope we’re not ruin somebody’s hunt hello already yeah yeah oh I’m going to step off where I can show it off a little bit so as you can see this yeah this um wall is broke out here the last time I was here this was all still intact good and the all the water
had to go out through that Chute over there and there used to be a water wheel on that Chute and that made the water level in the spring deeper and you could see into the center here um but it’s just lack of Maintenance it’s it’s a shame they let this place go like that pretty neat place though but yeah like you used to could ride all the way around it he heck you could have drove a car around this 10 years ago 20 years ago yeah that water is nice and cold and clean I think we probably better turn
around and go back because it looks unsafe that way get to ride through some Pines here Pines are always really pretty to ride through [Music] you never have to ask this horse to go all you have to do is slow him down he’s always in go mode feel sorry for Brian having to keep up on an average Fox trer when I have the uh fastest one in the world just to clarify when I say the fastest Fox Trotter in the world I’m not talking about in a foot race I what I mean is that Walter’s natural speed that he would choose to go over a long
distance that average face is extremely fast for Walter and when you ask him to go as fast as he can he can really make the hills look flat I would love to have him back as a six-year-old I would enter him in the Tevis Cup and I’m sure I could win because he has great cardio to boot okay Brian you’re on camera do the jump you can’t really jump at a walk Brian I wanted you to hit it like The Man from Snowy River you know where you throw a hand back and y’ Y yeah you gone over [Music] [Music] really narrow
Ridge it’s cool ride on the split oak on on the right uh left and Pines on the right you can see there’s been a fire through here well we had a good trail ride and uh made a good Loop here and we’re back to the creek see if they need some water or anything it’s pretty interesting riding a horse like this I hope you guys got a kick out of learning a little bit about them and seeing how different some of them can travel s’s already found the water and hole she’s had a probably 9 M day which is good for her get out and get some
exercise see if Walter needs a drink oh oh Walter ain’t about getting a drink is he he wants to go she will but you got a 2hour drive home you better get a drink we ended up doing 8.6 mil that day at a 6.2 mph Pace that’s including some of the rests and Dismounts that we showed you on the film so not too shabby for Walter I wasn’t going to tell you that sometimes they’ll lay down when they do that I didn’t know if you knew or not that have been good for the video thanks for coming with us try to hit the
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