After being sent so many awesome videos, thought I’d do a little thread on dog gait. #dog #caninescience #caninebiomechanics ...

The slowest gait is the walk. Rogue here is doing a ‘normal mammal’ type walk. Back Left -> Front Left -> Back Right -> Front Right, footfalls evenly spaced in time.

I say ‘normal mammal’ as this is what the average horse-like mammal does. Slow/small/cold things (think hippo/mouse/crocodile) do a different walk. And primates when moving as quadrupeds do something different again.

I’m interested in dog walks because dogs show a much greater range of walks than other 4-legged things. Here’s Rogue’s other walk where the front and back on each side move together (‘pace like’).

She, like a lot of other dogs, can do quite a pacey pace!

Next up, we have the trot. It’s like a human jog. The back left and front right move together, the back right and front left move together, with a little aerial phase in between. Terribly boring

As they get faster, dogs hit a gallop. At slower gallops, they often use a transverse gallop: back right -> back left-> front right -> front left-> fly through the air.

As they get faster, here’s my parent’s dog (Sir FloofsAlot), they use a rotary cheetah-like gallop. Back Right -> Back Left-> fly -> Front Left -> Front Right -> fly.

The flight after the back legs is ‘extended’ and the flight after the front legs is ‘gathered’.

My other big project at the moment is looking at the gaits of canine amputees and how they move on three legs instead of four. I'll post about this when I get through my analysis!