How do you evaluate a dressage prospect's trot?

Evaluating the trot in a dressage prospect is the most important single assessment in evaluating the horse's dressage potential because the trot is the gait most heavily represented in dressage tests and the one in which the most significant training movements — lateral work, half-passes, piaffe, passage — are performed. The evaluator should watch the trot from multiple angles — from the front, from the side, and from behind — to assess different qualities that are visible from each vantage point. From the side, the most important qualities are the degree of suspension — whether there is a clear moment when all four feet are simultaneously off the ground — and the quality of the reach of both the front and hind legs. The front legs should reach forward freely with a naturally extending quality that suggests they will reach further as the horse develops, and the hind legs should step well under the body with active flexion through the hock and stifle. From behind, the evaluator assesses whether the hind feet track directly behind the front feet — essential for straightness — and whether both hind legs appear equally active and equally reaching. From the front, the quality of the reach of the front legs is visible, and any tendency for the legs to move in an outwardly rotating or inwardly rotating pattern that departs from a clean forward reach becomes apparent. The trot's elasticity — the quality of spring and bounce that suggests the horse's natural tendencies will produce cadence and elevation in collected work — is the quality most associated with the horse's eventual dressage ceiling, and the evaluator should watch for this elastic, bouncy quality rather than only for the length of the stride. An ordinary trot can be improved significantly through training, but a trot with natural suspension, elasticity, and an uphill tendency has structural advantages that training can develop into exceptional competitive performance.