Re: cured a lateral canter

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 20:17:41 -0500, "J. Z. M."
<clayridgefarm@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2/28/06 7:20 PM, "lizzard woman" wrote:

I'm learning to feel correct collection at the walk. Walk is very tentative
on Pancake. So I know close to zip about walk oddities.

Don't screw it up by trying too hard. :) Most people who ruin a walk do it
by over riding IMHO. A walk needs to swing, even when collected, if you
hold the rein too tight, if you squeeze your *** cheeks too hard, if you
try to hold a horse together, if you swing your body too much, if you swear
under your breath, all will ruin a walk. But! a natural walk is a thing of
beauty and one should try to do as little as possible in the walk to achieve
collection. Do less than you think imaginable and the walk will not suffer.
My 2 cents in.

I think you'd purely admire Mocha's walk, Jody. I'm afraid to do
anything with it because she steps out and swings so well.

My other advice is go on a loose rein for your walks till everything is in
place then try collection at the walk, it can indeed be a sticky trouble to
undo once the horse has learned to amble at the walk.

Yep.

Most of my walk schooling is on a loose rein...but we're still at
conditioning phases, and if we show at anything for a while it will
NOT be Western Pleasure but hunt seat or reiners, and reiners don't
show at the walk...


So if you continually ride a horse hollow they will eventually gait????

No. Some horses gait, some do not. You cannot take any of my horses and make
them do a rack or a single foot, or whatever. But you might be able to make
them go in a lateral gait by improper riding, the difference is the lateral
expression of a gait is NOT a *gaited* gait. Understand the difference? It
might take you going to some websites that have footfall diagrams to see the
differences, and you might be able to see some footage of gaited animals in
work that would give you some perspective. Most gaited horses are naturally
given to the paces they use, and if not, then I suppose with different
riders you could make them trot or canter, but it would take a special rider
for this to be accomplished (I think). I sure as hell could not do it! :)

I think you'd have some people argue this point, Jody. I do agree
with you and Bill, though, that the best gaited horses are those bred
to it.

jrw
.