I’m not asking about how they produce the gait. I’m not trying to start a thread about soring. I know how they produce it and the torture that goes along with it.
I’m trying to understand why they want that Big Lick stride…is there a historical purpose for it or is it something that is done because it’s the trend?
Not trying to argue…just trying to understand it.
It looks overly exaggerated and not useful, but that my opinion.
So please teach me about the REASON for the Big Lick gaits and why is it called Big Lick?
Generally it starts out where all the horses move or look a certain way. Then one horse comes along and he moves different and the judges pin him. Then it spirals out of control. Look at the saddlebreds, morgans, arabs, and western pleasure horses. All main ring show breeds that grew more and more exaggerated over the decades as the extreme movement pinned. Even dressage horses.
Talk of the Town was a flashy moving horse naturally. He set a freaky standard others couldn’t touch, but they wanted to. Just as you want high stepping ASBs, park horses, hackneys, etc- the walkers just got wildly out of control. And I’m sorry, there’s a backwoods ‘they are tools, not sentient creatures, pour it on’ that is prevalent to the TN hollers. They don’t care about the horses except as white trash trophies.
Just as there is no purpose to a crabbing sideways WP canter, there is no purpose in the big lick. Done well the horse is rhythmic and steady and almost shows a true 4 beat gait. You pace the shit out of them, then square them up with nailed on talent. It’s absurd and obscene, but sadly, similar tactics are applied to poorly gaited flat shod horses.
[QUOTE=Chachie;8909992]
I’m not asking about how they produce the gait. I’m not trying to start a thread about soring. I know how they produce it and the torture that goes along with it.
I’m trying to understand why they want that Big Lick stride…is there a historical purpose for it or is it something that is done because it’s the trend?
Not trying to argue…just trying to understand it.
It looks overly exaggerated and not useful, but that my opinion.
So please teach me about the REASON for the Big Lick gaits and why is it called Big Lick?[/QUOTE]
Entertainment.
G.
The term "hittin’ a lick’ has always been used as a term of admiration when a horse was really working well 'boy he’s really hittin a lick, ain’t he? ’ so Big Lick likely comes from that.
I feel like it’s the inevitable result of an “if a little is good, A LOT is even better.”
(Someone who knows more than I do, please feel free to correct my uneducated self here)
Back in the day there was a TWH called Midnight Sun who had a naturally flashy and exaggerated running walk. He was basically the Secretariat of TWH, and that running walk became the It thing. Years of trying to make that happen and surpass it = modern Big Lick.
Or so it was explained to me by people who know things.
Define “purpose”?
Why does what others do has to have any “purpose” to anyone else?
I think most extreme things people do “don’t have much purpose” in general, they do for those that do or follow whatever that may be.
What falls into my own idea of goofy stuff of questionable good sense and little purpose?
Most gaited horses and short legged dogs of any kind, tattoos and piercings, football, rap lyrics, politics, any that humans tend to run with and take to extremes.
Every one of us will have our own “purposeful” and “no-purpose evident” lists.
They are that, our own individual lists, reflecting our own lives.
Every one of us in free societies should have, within sensible limits for the society we are part of, freedom to do what we choose to do and follow, even if others don’t see any “purpose” in that for them.
It would be a sad and unhappy world if everyone had only one way to live their lives, according to one only way to define “acceptable purpose”.
Purpose? feeding the owner’s ego…“my horse can step higher than yours and I can sit it…”
Human ego pretty much sums it up I think.
The big lick goes so far beyond having a smooth gaited, good-brained horse for many hours in the saddle per day it’s obscene.
Probably came from the same sort of disintegration of style as Hunters who originally were judged on grass courses over obstacles that might actually be met in a hunt field.
Or the current fad of Dressage horses with flashy extension in front.
Walking horses were bred to be comfortable for a day of riding through fields as you oversaw your plantation.
A smooth - flatshod - gait is like getting a backrub.
I speak from experience with my own TWH who Did.Not.Trot. Ever.
The Big Lick style does not look at all comfortable for horse or rider.
[QUOTE=enjoytheride;8910003]
Generally it starts out where all the horses move or look a certain way. Then one horse comes along and he moves different and the judges pin him. Then it spirals out of control. Look at the saddlebreds, morgans, arabs, and western pleasure horses. All main ring show breeds that grew more and more exaggerated over the decades as the extreme movement pinned. Even dressage horses.[/QUOTE]
You forgot show hunters.
Show walkers were actually quite attractive back in the 1940s or so. Check out YouTube videos of Strolling Jim or Midnight Sun. Then there was one extreme gaited horse, I forget his name right now but his gait was much different than what was accepted as “normal” back then, who came by it naturally. He won. People tried to make their horses travel more like that one freak. They turned to all sorts of tricky devices and training methods. Things got out of hand. I remember seeing a video of that horse. The difference in his gait was that real low, crouchy, hock wringing gait behind.
He canters like my standardbred 
This video really shows the evolution from the early years to the seventies.
There’s no purpose to a big lick horse. A flat shod walking horse on the other can be ridden all day comfortably 
and THAT was the original purpose of the TWH, to be ridden across a plantation/farm all day long with speed and comfort.
[QUOTE=SmartAlex;8910659]
Show walkers were actually quite attractive back in the 1940s or so. Check out YouTube videos of Strolling Jim or Midnight Sun. Then there was one extreme gaited horse, I forget his name right now but his gait was much different than what was accepted as “normal” back then, who came by it naturally. He won. People tried to make their horses travel more like that one freak. They turned to all sorts of tricky devices and training methods. Things got out of hand. I remember seeing a video of that horse. The difference in his gait was that real low, crouchy, hock wringing gait behind.[/QUOTE]
Sounds like GSD’s in the dog world and dressage horses today.
Some’s good, more’s better is what you see in the “gaited” horse ring and hunters, western pleasure, dressage and any other class that is judged.
I really despise what people have done to the TWH breed and the competition. Not to mention the other forms of competition. DH and I watched about 10 minutes of a Western Pleasure class recently. IMO the horses appeared in pain attempting to jog/trot and lope/canter so slow and to cover so little ground with their heads lower than their shoulders. Western Pleasure classes were somewhat interesting 40 years ago, now they are painful to watch.
Thanks for posting the video - my TWH/Racking horse (stable name Homer) cross is by Midnight Sun. I can see MS in my Homer.
Also the gentleman rode very well!
sk_pacer & x: Thanks for the videos
My only registered TWH had Midnight Sun on both sides.
He looked a lot like his great great grandsire, at 17h+ (my vet called him the Belgian Walking Horse) & had the same way of going.
It made me a little sad to see the stacked shoes arrive & start the “modern” Big Lick unnaturally uphill gait.
Thank you for posting the videos. It’s sad that they evolved from something beautiful into something painful.
