Absolutely goodhors, that is what my trainer told me. My guy is safe and fun, he tries hard, but to push him to be competitive wouldn’t be fair. He just isn’t made to bend. He did compete in ridden dressage through 1st level and we scored decently. He is super fun to gallop and jump, but he doesn’t like to collect and he gets uncomfortable with 10 m circles.
Most Icelandic trots here are not what a dressage judge is looking for.
Gaited Horses should not be encouraged to trot
I rarely post but I must completely agree with Goodhorz. If you have a good gaited horse, and then you ask him to trot, you will eventually ‘mess’ with his gait. We are re-habbing a 10 yr old unregistered TWH who was allowed to pull an amish cart for a few years and after 1 yr of serious training, he is finally not trotting, between gaiting, pacing, racking, etc. Very confused boy!.
Goodhorz says
Every breed can’t be the best at everything, despite breed publicity! I like gaited horses, but they were made first for riding comfort. Light vehicle behind, you can have fun. They just are not the best breed for CDEs. Why wreck a nice gaiting animal, trying to make it trot? Not what he was made to be doing. I love my big (over 16H) horses, but they would be very unhappy if I decided to make them competitive barrel, cutting or reining horses. Body style is not the most suitable, they probably will hurt themselves trying.
Standardbreds and Dressage
Wow GoodHors I totally dissagree with you as to standardbreds and dressage. If you are talking about Standardbreds off the track, and are retraining them to be ridden, yes you may have to work much harder to get an older horse to become more bendable. But a youngster Standardbred who has not gone to the track is a completely different story. Even so,we had adopted a standardbred off the track, and he could turn on a dime, jump up and buck and twist like a snake. He was so bendable in fact he was too much for what we wanted and we gave him back to the adoption program. We adopted another one at four months from a racing breeding farm and trained him to carriage drive. Guess what, he didn’t like to drive! As a four year old we gave him to someone else in the program that rode dressage, and within a month he was bringing home ribbons!
What a shame that people write off a breed as “unbendable”, when there are so many loving Standardbreds doomed to go from the track to the Amish, where they are just a car to someone, and could instead be adopted into a loving home as someone’s special horse. If you haven’t been around the Standardbred breed recently, I can tell you that the old “slat sided” Standardbred has been replaced by very Thoroughbred looking Standardbreds, beautiful horses, many also look like Morgans, ours did. Every breed has individuals who are not talented and athletic, but if you are educated and competant as a trainer, you can get most horses to bend. After that, it’s the combination of horse and rider that can continue on to higher levels in a sport, like dressage. As much talk as there is about it, and interest in it, most people who compete in dressage, do so at the lower levels, and never move up to the higher levels. There are many breeds competeing in dressage at lower levels, and they all do well. Don’t write off an entire breed like that. It’s usually the trainer or rider that lacks the knowledge to teach a horse to bend, not that the horse is incaple of it.
Give a horse a break. Standardbreds are willing and eager to please you, they are bred for it, or they wouldn’t be willing to race till they drop.
by the way the website for the Standardbred Retirement Foundation is www.adoptahorse.org Go down the home page and see what today’s Standardbred can do, and how versatile they are, and how gorgeous they look.
Standardbreds are not the kind of ridden, Gaited horse that started on this post. We are taking away from that discussion, so I will post my Standardbred thoughts on another thread.
