This may sound stupid but.....?

You are getting pretty good, but incomplete answers. Yes, lope is a western term. Yes, lope is a slow, collected canter, but western horses also canter and gallop! It is something like the trot terms in dressage: sitting trot, working trot, extended trot. Western horses lope, canter, gallop. A lope is SUPPOSED to be a three beat gait, just much slower and more collected than a canter. Poor training, and trying to force a horse into a show lope cause a LOT of horses to do weird things, like f four beat, over cant, and over express the up and down with the front end, but these are NOT correct lopes.