Proof that the contralateral limbs are programmed. Wait, are you guys showing dog gait video today ? yup, and for good reason.

This is how good our eyes are trained at gait stuff.  How good are yours ? Can you pick out what we saw immediately when watching this clip ? It is something really cool, perhaps proof that contralateral limbs, upper and lower,  are programmed and automatic. Even in dogs apparently. Did you see it ?  You may have to have to watch the video several times.

The dog initially is striking with the left forelimb while pairing that with right hindlimb just after (remember, this is running gait, not walking) . Kind of like how in human gait the left arm swing is in sync with the right leg swing (both in either flexion or extension, at the same time). We believe the central pattern generator for gait occurs in an area of the spinal cord at the junction of the the thoracic and lumbar spines (just like in the large sauropod dinosaurs!) click here for more info

But what is really cool is that there is a sudden change at 0:23sec.  The dog changes midstride to strike first with the right forelimb and immediately alters the hind limb to strike first with the left. Can you see it ? Look again. Isn’t the nervous system amazing!

Just as in humans the pattern change seems to be immediate and subconscious.  The rhythm and sync is predictable. It appears that even in animals the arm swing topics of weeks ago on in-phase and anti-phase of the shoulder and pelvic girdles hold true.

Did you see it immediately ? It may take you time to train your eyes like ours, but if you watch enough videos perhaps you too will have gait observation superpowers. 

Limb swing, even in animals, offer information to learn from and extrapolate to humans. Bipeds, quadrupeds….we don’t discriminate.

Shawn and Ivo……..gait experts……. on many levels.