>>> Or go for a ride on my Standardbred who came off the track as a pacer, He >>> does trot, >>> but he throws his rider clear up over his shoulder if she's not careful. >>> When Abby >>> first bought him, I kept thinking his name was actually Lurch.
Believe me, no horse has a stronger trot than my daughter's Arab, Thunder. He has a ton of suspension in his trot, with a lot of float in his gaits. That's a good thing for a hunter or dressage horse, but it's very hard to ride. I admit that I never mastered sitting his trot, although Emily did. She's a much better rider than I, partly for having learned on Thunder. That brings up another thing that always surprised me when I got into Icelandic's, having taken hunter then low-level dressage lessons for years. In hunter/dressage basics, the rider ALWAYS learns to post first, before sitting. Sitting...and certainly bouncing... are not allowed out of courtesy to the horse. The very first few lessons that a kid does are sometimes called the "up-down" lessons, since the instructor typically calls the words Up-Down-Up-Down to encourage the kid (or the adult, when it was me) to find that rhythm to go with the horse. It's only well after the rider has enough feel of the horse to post instinctively that she is allowed to even consider the sitting trot. Karen Thomas, NC
