I’ve got a clumsy TWH, but it’s really because he just doesn’t pay attention to his feet. He’s a bit of a sight-seer, so he tends to trip when he’s gawking at something along the trail… But I don’t think it’s inherent to the breed, just the individual.
My gaited horse, MFT x TWH tripped, stumbled and fell down with great regularity for the first 4 years I owned him. After many expensive dead end consultations with a variety of experts, he very obligingly got laminitis! That led me to finding my own answers, come to find out he was Insulin Resistant so I put him on a very tight low NSC diet plus I found myself a super new trimmer…take a bow MATRYOSHKA… who tweeked his trim and shortened his toes more. Today I have a super sound, non tripping gaited horse!
If he even thinks about tripping I recheck what he’s eaten lately or maybe if he needs trimmed and all is well immediately.
My gaited horse, MFT x TWH tripped, stumbled and fell down with great regularity for the first 4 years I owned him. After many expensive dead end consultations with a variety of experts, he very obligingly got laminitis! That led me to finding my own answers, come to find out he was Insulin Resistant so I put him on a very tight low NSC diet plus I found myself a super new trimmer…take a bow MATRYOSHKA… who tweeked his trim and shortened his toes more. Today I have a super sound, non tripping gaited horse!
If he even thinks about tripping I recheck what he’s eaten lately or maybe if he needs trimmed and all is well immediately.
If your farrier is prone to letting their toes get long, sure.
My TWH Chip overstrides a ton and occasionally catches himself so he trips on himself…Maggie is a huge 16.2 4 YO SSH/TWH and very rarely trips. She’s trimmed no different than my QHs, so none of that long trippy ‘gaited’ toe you see on some…
Viz, when I read your post, my first thought was, “Wow, somebody else is seeing tripping in an IR horse!” Then I realized who you are. I’m still not used to seeing you here. These kinds of questions always make me think of your horse. I don’t think the tripping has anything to do with him being gaited, though. IR and formerly long toes, sure.
I do know one Icelandic who trips a bit. I keep his toes back as well as I can–he’s the one who gaits much better with a shorter breakover. I suspect he is IR, but there’s no real proof that it is part of the problem. I’ve been working on the owner about his diet…
Very true, unfortunately
My boyfriend breeds flatshod walking horses… all shod just like quarter horses, nothing special. They are VERY prone to tripping… on the trail or otherwise. Gaited horses have been bred to be very “loose” going and this doesnt seem to do them many favors. In a trail horse, I would look for a very “square going” and/or racky gaited horse. They’re shorter strided and seem to be quite a bit more sure footed. The running walkers and more show types seem to trip A LOT. I have a great show horse that cleans up in Trail Pleasure, but he trips even on flat ground! Can get a little annoying and alarming at times.
IrishWillow, Even though your horses are flat shod, the toes could still be too long. Whenever I get a new client and I see long toes, I ask if the horse trips a lot. the answer is almost always YES. It gets better when the farrier/trimmer is careful to put the breakover where it should be for the coffin bone.
Even something as basic as saddle fit can affect how a horse moves up front. A saddle that pinches restricts the motion of the shoulder. If it causes the horse to land toe first, he’ll be a tripper.
So if a horse trips, I wouldn’t put it down to whether or not he’s gaited and leave it at that. I’d investigate for other causes, such as saddle fit, toe length, and IR. Also, any kind of problem in the foot that makes him short stride, such as deep thrush.
I have one reg. TWH and one reg. Racking.
My TWH is retired from “big shoe” showing (not me, I bought him to trail) and he is very clumsy. He is trimmed naturally. No long toes, etc.
I used to shoe him and he also now wears Easy Boots. But, in either, or bare, he was & is clumsy!
My racking horse, who is built differently, is very sure-footed. She is trimmed in the same manner.
[QUOTE=IrishWillow;4167743]
My boyfriend breeds flatshod walking horses… all shod just like quarter horses, nothing special. They are VERY prone to tripping… on the trail or otherwise. Gaited horses have been bred to be very “loose” going and this doesnt seem to do them many favors. In a trail horse, I would look for a very “square going” and/or racky gaited horse. They’re shorter strided and seem to be quite a bit more sure footed. The running walkers and more show types seem to trip A LOT. I have a great show horse that cleans up in Trail Pleasure, but he trips even on flat ground! Can get a little annoying and alarming at times.[/QUOTE]
I would disagree, at least in part.
One reason horses trip is that they are too short. The long toe is worse, but sometimes the reaction to the long toe is to trim short enough to approach “pressure shoeing.” I don’t think this is generally intentional, but it can happen.
A true running walk will always have three feet on the ground, just like the dog walk does. Very few Walkers do a true running walk. The more lateral you get the more “complex” is the gait the higher the probability of problems like tripping.
Any horse that wins in the show ring likely has a long toe/low heel trim. That’s required for the front end action necessary to get the judges attention. I noted earlier that the Show Ring and the trail are different universes. What works in one will not generally work in the other. The differences are more stark in some some show organizations than others.
A true, square running walk is, IMO, the best trail gait going. It’s not the fastest, but is the most secure and the least taxing on the horse.
The diagonal gaits are faster and demand less of the horse but more of the rider. They are more suited to rough ground.
The lateral gaits are faster but demand more of the horse and less of the rider. They are less suited to rough ground.
G.
Interesting. Still, I’d be looking into the cause of the tripping. Long toes aren’t the only cause, but they are a common one.
G., I haven’t seen horses tripping from too short a toe. That’s interesting. Perhaps it is because I’m trimming them and can only take them back so far. Sole pressure at the toe from a shoe would, I think, have the horse trying to unload the toe, which would cause them to move poorly, perhaps clumsily.
Chancy, if your saddle fits, then I’d ask what your horse’s body condition is. Easy keeper?
The horse mentioned in Grouseviz’ post needed his toes brought back to lessen the tripping. However, he didn’t start picking his feet up better until the owner got his IR problem under control through diet. Same trim. I know it sounds way off base, and if I hadn’t seen it for myself, I’d be skeptical. But her horse moves differently now, picks his feet up better, has more energy, etc. He’s almost a different horse. I’d love to be able to take credit for this, but I think it has more to do with his improved health than any trimming I performed. When I met him he was still growing out the effects from the founder and Grouseviz hadn’t perfected his diet yet.
Not all barefoot trimmers keep the toes back, either. Grouseviz had two highly respected trimmers working on her horse before I came along and took his toes back farther. She’d been asking them to, and they wouldn’t do it. I learned how to figure out a good breakover from studying Gene Ovnicek’s trimming. Very enlightening.
IMO (and I’m biased since I have one), the Paso Fino is one of the most sure-footed horses out there, especially those with Colombian bloodlines.
The ones I know are like little mountain goats.
[QUOTE=matryoshka;4168315]
Interesting. G., I haven’t seen horses tripping from too short a toe. That’s interesting. Perhaps it is because I’m trimming them and can only take them back so far. Sole pressure at the toe from a shoe would, I think, have the horse trying to unload the toe, which would cause them to move poorly, perhaps clumsily.[/QUOTE]
One of the less detectable methods of “soring” a show horse is an trim back into the sensitive tissue to cause pain. It’s not a practice I’d recommend. But I’ve seen some of the “anti-long toe” gaited horse types get so aggressive in trimming that they sored up their own horse. 
Put another way, their heart was in the right place; the head just wasn’t screwed on straight.
Tom Stovall has written much about efficiency of gait. A toe appropriate short will increase efficiency; taken too short it’ll just cause pain. So, once again, the human must exercise sound judgement in deciding how much is “just right.”
Again, tripping in a gaited horse less a function of gait than how gait is managed on multiple levels.
G.
Yep, “optimal” is what we seek when placing the breakover for each hoof. I like Ovnicek’s rule of thumb (literally) as a place to start. After that, owner feedback is essential to know whether I got it right. Of course, rads would make for less guesswork. I don’t usually have that luxury. And sometimes the hoof capsule is so distorted that “optimal breakover” can only be achieved when a whole new wall has grown in. Shoers have an advantage over us trimmers in that regard.
What do you think of poor saddle fit as a contributing factor? Some people don’t seem to realize the saddle doesn’t fit well until the horse acts up badly. Then they investigate saddle fit. Before the big blow ups, there are generally more subtle clues. I haven’t personally seen stumbling as one of these, but others have mentioned it.
[QUOTE=matryoshka;4168588]
Yep, “optimal” is what we seek when placing the breakover for each hoof. I like Ovnicek’s rule of thumb (literally) as a place to start. After that, owner feedback is essential to know whether I got it right. Of course, rads would make for less guesswork. I don’t usually have that luxury. And sometimes the hoof capsule is so distorted that “optimal breakover” can only be achieved when a whole new wall has grown in. Shoers have an advantage over us trimmers in that regard.
What do you think of poor saddle fit as a contributing factor? Some people don’t seem to realize the saddle doesn’t fit well until the horse acts up badly. Then they investigate saddle fit. Before the big blow ups, there are generally more subtle clues. I haven’t personally seen stumbling as one of these, but others have mentioned it.[/QUOTE]
Regarding foot care, you give the horse what it needs, when it needs it, and in appropriate quantity and quality. If that means shoes, then shoe it. If it doesn’t, then don’t. 
Poor saddle fit (including poor saddle placement, poor padding selection, poor saddle maintenance, etc.) can affect gait. If you are affecting gait then you’re possibly inducing tripping.
While I really hate word “holistic” (as it has been tortured so badly by some groups of zealots) you’ve got to look at the whole horse as it moves. You might “magnify” some aspect (foot, back, nutriction, tack, etc.) for study and possible correction of error but then you must put it all back together again. Way too many people get hung up on some single issue and don’t do it. That’s bad for the person and bad for the horse.
G.
[QUOTE=matryoshka;4168315]
Chancy, if your saddle fits, then I’d ask what your horse’s body condition is. Easy keeper?[/QUOTE]
I use Ortho Flex saddles on all of my horses. I ride him in different OF models that I have, and he’s always the same.
He is not an easy keeper. Nor a non-easy keeper. He’s right in the middle. Of my 5 horses, he is the healthiest. He’s 17 yrs old now and he has always been (of all my horses) the healthiest/most-fit one in the lot.
I have just learned to live with his clumsiness. I know his capabilities. He has only tripped & fell to his knees once with me on him. He has never fallen all of the way down, but that’s probably because I dont ask anything too technical of him. We keep it simple & slow, but we still have a good time. We just stumble & bumble down the trail. haha That’s my boy! I love him.
I’ve owned several Paso Finos over the years. None of them were trippers. One of them could find buried barb wire out on the trail like she was a metal detector, but she was unusually talented.
I was recently at a gaited horse clinic. A participant was having troubles. The clinician had the man use his saddle. The horse improved immediately. The rider had an ortho-flex saddle. The clinician said he had seen a lot of similar problems with ortho-flex and similar saddles. The panels got in the horses was and pinched them somehow. He explained it with the saddle. Since i don’t have that type of saddle I didn’t commit the info to memory.
I think its a myth! tripping has more to do w/ them not paying attention than anything else. If the toes are too long though, this can cause tripping.
I agree–the only time my Paso Fino has tripped is while doing a slow walk on totally flat ground. :lol:
She has never tripped or stumbled while in gait, even while going over some pretty rocky and uneven ground.
A Myth!
One of the things that makes easy-gaited horses so populair with trail riders is their sure-footedness.
