In a message dated 2/4/08 6:37:20 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
> Is there a strongly gaited Icelandic that is seriously competing in > endurance? I don't remember hearing of one, but I own two Icelandics who > are endurance dropouts. > Skjoldur, who has been seriously competing in endurance longer than you have had Icelandics, would beg to disagree with you. He has a nice tolt and paces also. It is very natural since I sure haven't done anything to bring it out. When his breeder, Elisabeth Haug, borrowed him back once to use as a demonstration horse on her farm, she said she could sell a hundred of him immediately if she had them. But her favorite horse to ride was his stablemate who she thought had one of the flashiest tolts of any horse she had bred when she would get him to do it. To say that he seriously competes in endurance would be an understatement. Although he is known as a trotter, Skjoldur's pal supposedly is actually foxtrotting most of the time according to some of my friends with foxtrotters who have ridden with him mile after mile. Maybe that is why his trot feels so smooth. Although his cohort is a bossy little beast, Skjoldur on the other hand is the most laid back horse I've ever seen. That didn't stop him from going over 2,000 miles in one season, becoming the first horse to ever go 1,000 miles in a thirty day period in sanctioned endurance rides, and winning the regional championship for points both in my weight division and overall and the national championship for points in multi-day rides in my weight division. Sort of the tortoise and the hare thing. The fact that that is possible is one of the great things about the sport. John Parke Solvang, CA
