Would you consider buying this horse for your breeding program? If s/he needs that much assistance in attaining a gait - is this horse truly 'naturally' gaited? Not only that, but if you look carefully, these feet are quite long (which also adds weight)...then you add the shoes, and the boots...and in about 5 years (probably a lot less time) you'll have a horse that has torn all of his tendons and is no longer sound. But man...you had a 'balanced' gait for a while there didn't you?
If you are considering purchasing any horse that needs this much help to gait...back away slowly. If you are considering purchasing a horse that needs you to cantle sit in order to gait...back away slowly. If you are considering purchasing a horse that needs you to yard on the reins with say...25 lbs of pressure constantly...back away slowly.
A gaited horse should be easy to ride, and easy to keep in gait as long has s/he has been brought along carefully and with some consideration to conditioning and appropriate training. DO NOT have your horse trained by a 'traditional' 'certified' Icelandic trainer. Any local trainer can train your horse, just don't have them mess around with gaits...babies simply can't be expected to maintain a gait for very long. That comes with time.
2 comments:
This is not to do with the gait. Those boots are for protecting the horse´s heel bulbs and the back of the pasturns. A horse that wears this type of boots tends to hit the back of his pasturns and heels. This has nothing to do with 'gaiting' the horse. And if the horse is having problems with hitting him self, it´s probably because of bad shoeing angles, bad conformation or the horse isn´t strong enough.
Saying don´t get your horse trained by a certified Icelandic trainer is incredibly wrong of you. There are many good, kind icelandic horse trainers out there. Big horse trainers don´t understand how the icelandic horse thinks so they cannot train them as well. The training of the gaits and the cues all leads up to gait training so it needs to be done right. I have come across many horses that were trained by big horse trainers and their gaites were ruined and needed alot of retraining to get them to go easily into clean tolt. I´ve also had horses that were hard in the mouth and dead in the head from big horse trainers. So it´s not always the best way to go. The key is to find the trainer that trains the horses light in the mouth, lets them have their personalities shine through, and trains them to want to work with you. And there are Icelandic trainers like that out there.
Oh and those shoes the horse is wearing in the picture look like worn down 8mm which adds up to almost no weight.
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