Gaited Horse Confusion - Saddlebreds

[Alterration]

I think the other day he may have been giving me a bit of a fox trot (or is it fox walk) instead of a jog. I slowed it way way down and I could see the fronts land before the hinds with no real air time. It’s just hard because my eye isn’t educated to it yet! He also got a bit pacey (head swinging side to side of his own accord) as well as got a more exaggerated head nod at a fast walk. Not a Walker nod, but definitely not a normal walk nod, if that makes any sense.

I don’t really want him to go around inverted in a true rack, but I’ll take a nice little fast flat walk or fox trot if I can get it! A slow saddle rack/slow gait wouldn’t be bad either.

[Jackie_Cochran]

Your key here is PATIENCE.

Ask for little at first. The horse will have to strengthen some “new” back muscles, nerve paths will have to be strengthened, and the horse will need to become familiar with the new foot-fall pattern.

In a few months of gradually increasing periods of gaiting it will end up simple for both you and your horse.

Sometimes the horse will offer you the easy gait. You may want to go at a speed that neither your horse’s walk or trot is the most efficient way to go.

Let the horse dictate how it carries its head and neck. The horses I rode went into a form of collection, different from dressage collection, but collection none the less (it took me a long time to figure this out) just from how my legs coordinated with the hind foot groundings.

Light contact or sagging reins prevent the rider from messing up the horse’s natural easy gait. It is a different “conversation” than the walk, trot or canter contact conversation, I just let my hands adapt to the horse’s mouth. If I did not the dreaded inversions appeared. The head/neck will not look the same as at other gaits, and this will develop with more experience with the easy gait.

Enjoy!

[Alterration]

@Jackie_Cochran

Let the horse dictate how it carries its head and neck. The horses I rode went into a form of collection, different from dressage collection, but collection none the less (it took me a long time to figure this out) just from how my legs coordinated with the hind foot groundings.

Light contact or sagging reins prevent the rider from messing up the horse’s natural easy gait. It is a different “conversation” than the walk, trot or canter contact conversation, I just let my hands adapt to the horse’s mouth. If I did not the dreaded inversions appeared. The head/neck will not look the same as at other gaits, and this will develop with more experience with the easy gait.

Oh for sure. Our experiments with walking thus far have been on a loose rein, with the occasional very light contact. I have been watching a lot of Ivy Starnes stuff and it makes the most sense to me in terms of our goals.

We also stop and he gets a treat if he does anything other than a slow dog walk or hard trot - so any steps at any intermediate gait. I think this is why I’ve been so successful in getting a variety of offerings thus far, he is a very smart horse and enjoys this method of training. Our total rides are about 15-20 minutes right now, and I’m only asking for a few steps at a time.

In between there we do our normal circles, serpentines, shoulder ins, obstacle training etc etc. I’ve always had to keep his mind busy or he would get creative of his own accord. He is a very fun horse!

And I had no idea before I started down this rabbit hole, how many paints, QHs, and Arabians there were that gaited as well. I know it’s not as many as the true gaited breeds, but it is pretty amazing that there are a number of them! Really makes you think about the gaits differently.

[Jackie_Cochran]

Yes, many Arabians have some form or another of an easy gait.

The Bedouins did not tend to use stirrups. The horses also had to keep up with the speeds of the camel herds. Unfortunately most of the European importers did not value this or even recognize it when it happened and had not idea of how to develop an easy gait.

Not all Arabs, but there have been several that responded immediately to my gaiting aids, to much praise!

[Go_Fish]

Back in the day at the A shows, there were 3-gaited and 5-gaited classes for saddlebreds. Is that not the case anymore?

I rode western back in those days, but my farrier and his wife raised and showed saddlebreds. He invited me over one day to ride some of them. I remember the 3-gaited horse was a pretty rough ride for a novice in a pancake saddle. The 5-gaited horse was much easier!

[Montanas_Girl]

@Jackie_Cochran

Yes, many Arabians have some form or another of an easy gait.

I think this is more a reflection of how highly trainable Arabians are, rather than any true “gaited” tendency. Any type of “gait” would be extremely inefficient and tiring in a desert/deep sand environment. But Arabians are so smart and eager to please that you can teach them pretty much anything with a bit of effort.

[luvmyhackney]

It is. I watched Asheville and they had the same classes with a ton of age splits.

5 gaited is easy to rack but can be a pain to trot. 3 gaited horse throws you so far out of the saddle with their hind leg, definitely different than western.

[Alterration]

There still are 5 gaited classes.

The interesting part is that the presence of (or lack of) DMRT3 gene (the gait keeper gene) does not affect the choice or success of training one to gait according to this study. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27295976/

Which makes me considerably more curious about the heritability in the breed.

[luvmyhackney]

I’d want to see what horses they used for the study as half the horses in the gaited classes last weekend were pacing and not racking. Plus very few have a true slow gait anymore, it’s a slower rack. A slow gait should be 1,2,slight hesitation, 3,4.

[Alterration]

That apparently has been an issue for quite awhile (the lack of true slow gait and rack).

I paid for the UC Davis analysis so I’ll be interested to see what my horse has (or doesn’t have) given his pedigree. I did send video of him to a pleasure gaited trainer (not a show one) and she thinks we’ll get a comfortable saddle rack and flat walk (not a flat footed walk, but more like a slow running walk) despite it not normally being taught to saddlebreds.

The more I dive into this gaited research the more fascinating it all becomes.

[Alterration]

For anyone interested…this article(?) also really fascinates me when it comes to the concept of gait and history. https://www.sport-horse-breeder.com/irish-hobby.html

[Jarpur]

Interesting article. I wonder if there is some relation to the Icelandic horse, which has been in Iceland since the late 800s A.D.

[Alterration]

@Jarpur

Interesting article. I wonder if there is some relation to the Icelandic horse, which has been in Iceland since the late 800s A.D.

My guess is blood probably went both ways - since there were Irish monks in Iceland very early, and then arrived the Vikings, who would have brought their horses with them. Then conversely, they went to the UK around a similar period of time, so I’m sure there were ambling horses being bred on both sides.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982216307527 This article postulates the same thing.

It makes sense that gaited horses were the default for so long, since riding trotting horses without stirrups, or sideways like the women did before true sidesaddles were invented, would be a miserable task.

[Alterration]

And I would guess that this is why you find gait in the odd QH or Paint (I’ve seen both gaiting). https://www.tehachapinews.com/lifestyle/trainer-talk-spanish-jennet-the-foundation-ambler/article_4e658276-e740-56e7-9b01-f0d9f174c40d.html

[Alterration]

And, my guess related to the Arabians is that it natural to some lines - https://www.volkansadventures.com/history/brief-history-turkish-horse/

Ambling horses were brought to Spain by the influence of the Moors. These were early barbs and Arabians.

This article is completely fascinating! https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwj13IXs1Pz-AhUUMDQIHT6OBuM4ChAWegQIChAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.american-saddlebred.co.uk%2Fapp%2Fdownload%2F5790475680%2FThe%2BAmbling%2BInfluence.pdf&usg=AOvVaw0dkaJBS1Y4rNieldnj-5ug

[Jackie_Cochran]

I want to thank you all for these absolutely fascinating articles.

I once owned a pure Puerto Rican Paso Fino mare. She showed a heavy Barb influence and was gaited. I only saw her trot ONCE in the pasture, and never again. She paced, paced, paced until I learned to time my aids to get a 4-beat gait.

Pure Arabians, my Al Khamsa/Asil pure Davenport stallion and mare both understood my gaiting aids IMMEDIATELY. This was not a fluke, because of my health problems I had not ridden my Davenport Arabian mare for 3 years after the ONE time I got a gait from her using my gaiting aids, and she remembered and immediately went into a fox-trot. I was way too handicapped to ride her any more so this did not get developed (my stallion had died, sniff.)

I had an Anglo-Arab gelding, no pedigree, but I had not found any Arabian that looked like him until I visited Craver’s farm where one of the first horses I saw there was an almost exact duplicate of my gelding’s body build. I may have found the Arabian Davenport who sired him, Ibn Ralf, I talked to the guy who owned Ibn Ralf the year my Anglo-Arab was sired, and Ibn Ralf was in the right place, at the right time, and his owner had given permission to breed him to TB mares. Ibn Ralf was the uncle/cousin to several horses who were inbred in my Davenports’ pedigrees, so my Anglo-Arab and my Davenports were possibly closely related. The Davenports gave me a gait (fox-trot), I tried it with my Anglo-Arab several times before I got cussed out with a “WTF are you doing you mad-woman” from my normally very agreeable horse. They had the gaiting gene, he did not even though they were closely related.

I find the gaited gene discussions fascinating. However I prefer posting to the trot to sitting down to a gait even as handicapped as I am right now.

I bless the Englishman who invented posting because I really like riding the trot, the rhythm is wonderful as are the impulsion and balance, as long as I am posting.

[Leather]

If you haven’t already check out Lee Ziegler - she was very much into the biomechanics that make gaited horses tick.

This article has some tips for teaching a trotty racking/saddle horse to gait that you could probably play around with. Convert That Trot by Lee Ziegler

Her book Easy Gaited Horses is a great read as well. It was my go-to when I first started dabbling in the gaited horse world.

[quietann]

Side note: is the gaiting gene in Morgans the same as in Icelandics? People think of Morgans as a trotting breed, but there are some who gait, though the show breeders breed to avoid it. A fair number of western-bred, “working” Morgans are gaited. But the gene is described as the “Synchro-gait” gene. They are getting more popular as the riding community ages!

My mare may have gait; she sometimes did a “homegoing walk” on the trail that was very smooth and had a significant head-nod. And she does trace back to horses that are said to be a source of gait in the breed.

[ShenanAnna]

Morgans have such a varied background, a wide gene pool. A lot of Saddlebreds not too long ago, a lot of unregistered for a long time, and an old breed too.

I’d be interested to find out the gaiting gene(s) in Morgans; mine would do an odd trot-speed something-or-other at times. He was Lippitt-bred, and came from a large western ranch.

[StormyDay]

I have nothing of value to add.
Just thinking of the first person to breed a horse that had the mutation to gait. And how confused they must have been.
“George, I think there’s something wrong with your horse”
“No it just does that.”
“I kind of like it. Let’s make more”