A friend of mine is going to look at a pleasure horse this coming weekend. She sent me a bunch of videos, and I had a major :eek: when I saw that the horse was troping pretty badly both directions, especially considering the price tag. Which got me thinking, is troping something that can be fixed with just pushing the horse up more, or is it something that once the horse tropes, they always will? This fall I am thinking of starting to look around for a western type stock horse, and I am sure this is something I will come across.
It is fixable, but it is often a time consuming process. Your friend will need to evaluate her goals for this horse. If she wants to show in the near term, I would pass on the horse. You have to spend a lot of time pushing them up into proper engagement before slowly teaching them to collect and slow down again (riding them back to front). This can take quite a while, and the horse will not be ready to show. Most horses will tend to default back into the trope for a long time, so the rider must actively demand correct engagement and body shape. This usually can’t be done one-handed, so it will be nearly impossible to show the horse. Depending on the individual horse, you may need to move it back into a snaffle bit to complete the remedial training, and it is illegal to show a stock horse older than 5 in a snaffle bit (at breed shows).
I would take a careful look at the horse and the level your friend intends to perform with it. If it has the attitude and skills that you need (i.e. Will carry your grandma or your husband anywhere), the troping can be fixed. But if you want to show at higher breed levels, a confirmed troping horse won’t have the quality of movement that is required. Having retrained several projects, I would personally have to REALLY LOVE a horse to want to spend the time to retain this behavior. It is a lot of work, can take a lot of time, and there’s no guarantee that the horse won’t revert back to the troping periodically. I definitely wouldn’t pay big $$ for it.
May I ask what troping is?
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It’s a horse that 4 beats at the lope, which is not a correct lope.
Trotting + loping = troping. Not a true trot or canter. On the English side we call this trantering, but same idea.
Most often caused by poor training where rider tries to slow down the canter too early on by riding the face. They don’t realize how much carrying power the horse needs to canter correctly, but slowly, so they just pull or hold the bridle until the canter feels slow. The horse tries to do as told the best it can, but then they are not engaged correctly behind…more shuffling. Once this is trained consistently at a young age, it’s hard to change.
It can be fixed but the average recreational rider on their own is unlikely to be able to untrain then retrain…and you bet it takes a very long time and they will default back to it when stressed, particularly if they were doing it for years. Rider needs to have a specific skill set to cope with it.
The only thing worse to try to fix is a spur stop…awwwwkkk, those are frustrating and it always reappears when you least expect it…or want it.
I do have the skill set but wouldn’t touch either one of these, 4 beating or a spur stop knowing what’s involved and the longer it’s been doing it, the less likely I’d take it on. They’ll let you down. Too bad, not their fault but that training is ingrained.
Might tell friend that despite still dealing with low poll issues, seeing fewer and fewer 4 beat lopes rewarded at even smaller shows. If she wants to go show, I wouldn’t want this one. If she just wants to ride it around I don’t think it matters…except it might not know how to just be ridden around. IME, confirmed 4 beaters rarely got ridden out of an arena and never, ever asked for anything but walk or slow jog, never cantered. That’s not going to make a trail rider looking for a nice, finished ride too happy.
Ah, some 4 beaters are “helped” by unsoundness as well, particularly navicular or sore heels. It’s not something that would attract me to go look at a horse off a video.
Thanks for the explanation. Makes sense. I just have never seen it described in that terminology before.
Have to agree with those speaking of “fixing” the problem, it would be hard work and lots of regression by the horse who has been rewarded for this bad movement. If he is ALSO spur trained, he is something you don’t want to own. He got trained to go this way, probably after some hard training moments, so punishing him for doing either or both things is really not fair to him. Let him go to someone who doesn’t care if he goes that way, not trying to “fix him” by retraining him.
Tell your friend to keep looking, there are slow movers doing correct gaits, for sale.
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It will take lots of pushing and pushing and positive reinforcement. My hunter wasn’t trained to trope but he wasn’t taught to really use his hind end, so when he was still learning to really collect and hold himself, we had a lot of troping moments. If this horse is more than willing to move faster when asked, then I don’t think teaching him to move out will be difficult but it will take consistency and several months. My green gelding took around six months to learn to REALLY move out and start building correct muscle, and then the next six months slowing down and holding himself up. We still have our moments like any horse who isn’t 100%, but his canter is a dream to ride now. The correct muscling from cantering has also influenced his trot tremendously.
Some love spur stop and some hate it. I will say that it is AWESOME for horsemanship. My gelding had a spur stop on him when I got him as he was pretty western, but when we realized his niche was definitely HUS we decided to retrain him. It was pretty fun while it lasted though. 
If this horse is perfect in every other way and your friend is capable and is working with a capable trainer/instructor, I wouldn’t necessarily knock him. If he has several other “eh” factors, or your friend doesn’t want to spend months retraining him, pass.
