Hello!
This is my first post, so lets see how this goes.
My mother owns a Rocky/Kentucky Mountain mare named Sage. She’s has just turned 15, and has recently had issues with a locking patella. Our vet recommended that once she has recovered, we start her over trot poles.
Personally, I’ve only ever owned trotting horses, so I have no clue how to go about setting up poles for a gaited horse.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you very much,
Emily
I do’think this is a good idea with a gaited horse that lacks a natural trot. Making her do a disjointed gait won’t be helpful to her injury going across the poles.
Is Vet familiar with gaited horses, knows she is not a trotting horse? Perhaps he meant to just walk her over poles for more lift to her sore leg?
For rehab/strengthening purposes, walking over poles is going to be OK for your horse, and gaited horses can gait over poles as well, but you will need to space them apart adequately for that horse’s particular stride.
If you have a hard time developing the right spacing, just space them out far enough apart that the horse can have a stride or two between the poles.
The purpose of the poles in your case is to strengthen, not to develop lift in the stride, so walking over pole sets (and turning that into raised poles as she develops strength), and gaiting over singular poles spaced farther apart (if you have a hard time developing the right spacing for her stride during the gait, which may be the case if you are not familiar with her typical gait vs. an compromised stride she is offering to work over the poles) will work and strengthen without hurting her.
Start at a walk and pole sets and go from there. 
You don’t recover from a locking patella, without doing the strengthening exercises to get stronger, so I’m not understanding the vet’s suggestion of “once she has recovered, we start her over trot poles.”
Trot poles are a way TO recover. Not just something to be done once UFP is no longer an issue.
That said, if the horse can’t trot or pace (and I think a pace is an incorrect gait in these guys), don’t trot over poles.
You can walk over them, and the biggest benefit will be from raising them, and working over them in a variety of patterns, including poles on an arc. But you have to be careful working on the walk like this - it’s much easier to ruin a walk. With the trot, you can work on shortening as well as lengthening the stride, but you really don’t want to work on a shorter walk stride - only the normal length, and a bit of a lengthened stride.
You can still work on transitions within and between gaits, and use hills, as ways to increase the strength of the quadriceps muscles.
Poles are good for any horse. I usually walk my TWHs over them, not gait over them though. This helps a lot- agree with JB.
If you set the poles up on an arc it will be easier to find the distance the horse is comfortable with.
They can gait over poles, you just need to figure out the spacing. Poles are sometimes used to discourage the pace.
