Only a few persons like Washington realized their duty to the future.
In the matter of stock as well as in pure agriculture the Virginians were backward.

They showed to best advantage in the matter of horses.
Virginia gentlemen were fond of horses, and some owned fine animals and cared for them carefully.

A Randolph of Tuckahoe is said to have had a favorite dapple-gray named "Shakespeare" for whom he built a special stable with a sort of recess next the stall in which the groom slept.
Generally speaking, however, even among the aristocracy the horses were not so good nor so well cared for as in the next century.
Among the small farmers and poorer people the horses were apt to be scrubs, often mere bags of bones.

A scientific English agriculturist named Parkinson, who came over in 1798, tells us that the American horses generally "leap well; they are accustomed to leap from the time of foaling; as it is not at all uncommon, if the mare foal in the night, for some part of the family to ride the mare, with the foal following her, from eighteen to twenty miles next day, it not being customary to walk much.

I think that is the cause of the American horse having a sort of amble: the foal from its weak state, goes pacing after the dam, and retains that motion all its life.