>>> For a pacey horse that you would like to have fox trot, you would do >>> something different than asking the square horse to fox trot, and also >>> different than asking the naturally gaited fox trotter to fox trot.
Exactly. When we start the young horses under saddle, we let them pick the next gait up from walk. If that's foxtrot, fine. If it's running walk or flat walk, fine. If it's saddle rack, fine. If it's trot, fine too - although we haven't started one to pick trot lately - can't remember starting an Icelandic who didn't offer one of the soft gaits from the get go, but we've been focusing on breeding horses. If the young horse were not to have much of a range of gait in his repertoire, that's fine too...if other gaits come later, that's just icing. What we do when we let the horse pics his choice of gait, we just sit quietly, trying to be balanced and go with his motion, basically staying out of his way. When you do that, and you're pretty sure your saddle fits as well as possible, and you're pretty sure you're using a suitable mild bit, or no bit, you've taken care of the horse's teeth, and his hoofs are trimmed in balance, you can pretty much relax and let the horse show you what he's naturally got. It really takes the mystery out of "gait training." No "special" training required. :) I've also learned to take a stab at conformation analysis as taught by Lee Ziegler and Liz Graves, and Liz has since marked up and analyzed most of my horses. Not surprisingly, what Liz saw in their conformations was always very similar to what we'd actually seen the horses do - some of the horses have ranges of gaits so the conformation analysis is never 100% precise, but she's always been very much in the range we've seen...and she's marked them all before seeing them ridden. Karen Thomas, NC
