>>> Oh, they are - horses must be on the correct lead in oval track competition (or dressage, of course).
At the one and only Icelander-led clinic I attended, one of the horses repeatedly got the wrong lead on the track. I didn't want to be too bluntly critical, so I tried casually asking one of the clinicians how the Icelandic show judges score a wrong-lead canter. The American rider had been taking clinics from one of the clinicians for something like SEVEN years. She sweetly piped up, "What's a lead?" She was preparing to take that horse to a sanctioned Icelandic clinic the very next week, entering her in "five-gaited" classes, and she'd never even heard of "leads." To put it mildly, I was not impressed. The other clinician then got on the mare, rode her VERY roughly, and the mare STILL couldn't seem to get the right lead - not that man-handling her in that way was likely to make her relax and "get it," poor dear mare. I have a tape that Cary made of that Icelander riding that mare from that experience, and it hurts to watch how he rode that mare. A year or two later, that very same dude won one of the international titles at the World Cup, and he was a previous "tolt champion" from Landsmott. It was a Twilight Zone experience for me - I couldn't believe it. Karen Thomas, NC No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.15/1248 - Release Date: 1/28/2008 9:32 PM IceHorses Community for Photos and Videos: http://kickapps.com/icehorses "The greatest enemy of the truth very often is not the lie- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." ~ Arthur Schopenhauer [] Lee Ziegler http://leeziegler.com [] Liz Graves http://lizgraves.com [] Lee's Book Easy Gaited Horses http://tinyurl.com/7vyjo [] IceHorses Map http://www.frappr.com/IceHorses Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IceHorses/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
