>> I thought maybe stepping pace, but again, I was expecting pace.
>>> A rack can look like a stepping pace if you are looking at the "pick up" of the feet. In the rack, each foot sets down separately, even timing; but the timing of the pick up is lateral; they are moving, picking up, more closely together in time. I used to wonder this: if the lateral pair of feet pick up about the same time, how can they start out together but then become totally "out of sync" during the fraction of a second that they are moving? Obviously, they have to travel the same horizontal distance- otherwise the front end of the horse would get to the destination long before the rear! I've never seen that happen! So, if the front feet don't travel further, what happens? The back feet sort of slide along (not literally sliding...) in an almost straight line just above the ground, while the front feet really DO travel further - but the front feet have more of an arc to their pattern. Does this make sense? I had to freeze frame video to get my head around it. And that's why it's so easy to manufacture the rack in so many horses. What are some tricks? What happens when a horse hollows his back? He tends to lift his head. Is a horse with a horizontal neck position lift his feet as easily as one with a raised head? No, he is more likely to bump his knees with his chin. Tricks to break up a pacey horse into rack/tolt would include putting the saddle too far back, so that the horse hollows his back, raising the hands up and/or using a long-shanked bit, sitting on the cantle, adding bell boots to encourage the horse to fling his legs up, as do putting heavier shoes on front. We see ALL of these in the Icelandic competitions, so that tells me there is a LOT of gait manipulation going on.... And of course, people are always drawn to breed what wins in the show ring. Unfortunately, cantle-sitting riders, shanked bits, saddles placed too far back, heavy shoes and bell boots are NOT genetic, and those add-ons won't be passed onto the next generation. I think virtually ALL of these manipulations are allowed in the so-called BREEDING EVALUATIONS, except for the heavier weighted shoes in front - I certainly see plenty of loin sitters and tight saddles placed too far back at the evaluations, and a horse who doesn't "lift" his knees will get seriously penalized, with a much lower evaluation score. The whole idea of breeding evaluations is downright scary. Using the criteria they use, we are likely to breed the NATURAL gaitedness out of the horses - those of us who've seen it happen with TWH, Saddlebreds, and now starting even with the RMH, we see a scary similarity. On the other hand, there are horses who are naturally built to rack - it's just in their conformation. Unfortunately, when we look at a horse in an evaluation with so much manipulation, and so much hard riding, it's hard to know what the horse would do without that hard riding, the tight, too-far-back saddle, and the head pulled so hard with the reins. It IS possible for a horse with a RELATIVELY flat way of moving (meaning nothing like the show horses) to rack though - although that seems to me to most likely to be the saddle rack, the version of the rack where the horse has alternating 2, then 3 feet on the ground and the front arc isn't so noticeable to the naked eye - those are the ones who REALLY are hard to tell from pacers, until you get a little practice and train your eyes. This elephant video surprised the heck out of me, because he's doing a true rack - with alternating 1, then 2 feet on the ground at a time. For an animal to balance on a single foot, he has to be moving at a good speed. I think that's the part that surprised me most about this elephant. That's a big critter to be balancing on one foot - but he really was zooming along. Karen Thomas, NC No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.16/1250 - Release Date: 1/29/2008 10:20 PM
