Foot-Timing in the Age of Wi-Fi: New...
BY DAN SAYERS continued
The working relationship of horse and hound is critical to understanding correct structure and movement in the dog. Illustration courtesy The Dog in Action by McDowell Lyon.
Palaeolithic cave paintings in the Dor- dogne region of France to the reign of Egypt’s King Tutankhamun and right up to the 19th century, coursing hounds and horses were generally rendered at full extension, a position that could be seen with the naked eye. For centuries, animals were thought to simply walk or run. The notion of specific gaits would only be understood centuries later with the invention of the camera. In 1878, English photographer Ead- weard Muybridge used 24 cameras to capture a sequence of multiple shots of a galloping horse. The images were
the result of an experiment funded by a former Governor of California and race–horse owner named Leland Stanford. The study set out to deter- mine if all four feet of the horse were ever off the ground at the same time. Muybridge’s image of The Horse in Motion (also known as Sallie Gard- ner at a Gallop ) proved that, indeed, they were. When the stop–action pho- tographs were run together, they pro- duced the effect of the Kentucky–bred mare in motion. This groundbreak- ing work is considered a precursor to the development of motion pictures.
In 1887, the University of Pennsylva- nia published Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion, An Electro–Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movement . 1872–1885. Among the 221 plates of moving animals are several dogs, including a Mastiff and a Greyhound. Muybridge’s work proved to be an inspiration in artistic as well as scien- tific circles. The French Impressionist Edgar Degas produced a remarkable series of horse racing scenes that con- veyed the kinetic energy of the track, and the Italian painter Giacomo Balla depicted a Dachshund and his Mistress in motion with the charming Dyna- mism of a Dog on a Leash. Images of moving animals likewise encour- aged research in the field of veterinary orthopedics. During the 20th century, the musculoskeletal system that drives mobility was redefined by a whole new vocabulary. The study of canine loco- motion would eventually include the temporal (measurable) characteristics, kinematics (geometry) of the limbs, and electrogoniometry (electrical mea- surements of the angles of the joints.) Today, high–speed motion pictures are utilized to analyze gait in both the horse and dog. MOVEMENT FROM THE INSIDE OUT Through the study of both still pictures and motion photography, words such as pace, canter and gallop came to describe specific two, three, and four-beat gaits that had remained
The horse makes several appearances to demonstrate specific gaits in this influential book on canine locomotion. Illustration courtesy The New Dogsteps by Rachel Page Elliott.
136 • S how S ight M agazine , J une 2018
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