>>>> It's an interesting history of the people in the breed in the US. My feeling is that most of the owners got into the breed as novice horse owners.
My first dealings with Icelandic owners were 1) the local person (now my good buddy) who'd just bought two Icelandic's from Anneliese - she'd owned horses all her life of 40-something years, but these were her first two Icelandic's. Then 2) Anneliese...who'd had horses a few years longer than me, but mostly had Icelandic's...and she'd imported and bred dozens and dozens of Icelandic's and 3) Robyn and Christine, both of whom had owned horses many more years than I had, and had owned Icelandics MANY more years than I had. I was content to be the "newbie" - I'd "only" had horses for 15 years then. But then, I looked on the website of the woman (from the ebay encounter) who'd told me I shouldn't be breeding. I was amused to see that I'd owned horses more than twice as long as she had, and she'd only owned Icelandic's. The next two people who lectured me that I should "educate myself" had only had horses (Icelandic's) for maybe five years, and they failed to see any value at all to my pre-Icelandic horse experience! .>>>> At one point in their newsletter, there was an article about barefoot, and an article about advice from Liz Graves.... then a stop was put on anything that wasn't of "iceland". It was only last year when Tolt News had an article on Natural horsemanship. The article grudgingly said that NH might be ok for some basic training, but for "serious" gait training, you need a REAL Icelandic trainer. Yeah, sure. Karen Thomas [EMAIL PROTECTED]
