>From Mary Donald (gaited horse judge and clinician) of the gaitedhorse list, speaking of Peruvian Pasos:
.... as all of you said...each horse and rider are a little bit different, so you can see a hollow backed horse due to the stupid training of the horse. You can see this when the horse is star gazing, nose in the air, and the neck is braced. This is wrong and not proper for the breed. Second, they are quicker on the feet than some of the other breeds...not as short strided as the paso fino, but certainly shorter than the TWH. The guide/rule is that the horse must at least CAP at the paso llano, but better would be over by six inches. You will see a lot of different things going on with the breed due to different ways people ride from very good to "can you believe it." The horse can change from the 2-3 footfall to a pure singlefoot at speed. Have many pictures of horses at speed with just one foot on the ground. At that speed they are really moving. Now, when you see the short strided movement (behind the cap mark) generally the lateral movement has changed to the diagonal just briefly and that changed the gait to a paso trot( foxtrot). And, you see a lot of that due to the rider letting the horse go heavy on the front end. The breed is fun to ride as they are very capable of doing a lot of things. But, in the same token, you have to really ride well to get the best out of the horse. They try very hard to do what the rider wants, thus, if you don't ask for much, you don't get much. I am sure that this is very true in all of the other gaited breeds. I just helped a gentleman with his paso fino MULE. The mule is small and fine. Really laid back and cute as a button. Anyway, he had her trained by a AQHA trainer and she went quiet, head down,and trotted nicely. Within a short period of time we got her to do a nice little corte by raising her head up. If we got her head in a medium place..she would fox trot. There was only a small difference between the corte and the fox trot. So, he could get the gait depending upon the ground and speed the group would be going, so no more hard trot for him. Tried hard to place her head in a position that keep the back in a neutral position. This little mule could not rack, but what a smooth traveling gait she will develop in either the corte or the fox trot depending upon which one the guy finds the most comfortable for him to ride. Mary ______________________ Judy http://icehorses.net http://clickryder.com
