>>> I too have a "three gaited" icelandic. and it IS a bad description. >>> Thank you! for one, he has two trots, one rough and one with almost no >>> percussion at all, my rear doesnt even leave the saddle.
But Janice, dressage/hunter/western type (read: non-gaited) horses are typically referred to as "three-gaited" horses. How many kinds of trots are there? Well, there's a jog,a working trot, a lengthened trot, a medium trot, an extended trot...and that's before you even get into the variations of the collected trots. Even "jog" has its variations - what I love in a QH trail horse jog is NOT the same thing as that convoluted western pleasure show ring jog. Then there are good and bad versions of each kind of trot. BUT...the gait is the trot - all of these descriptions are simply variations. Knowing Tivar, I'm pretty sure that his no-percussion trot where your butt stays put is his lovely, lovely, natural jog... the "real-world" kind, not the show ring kind. I love a good jog - my Sundance had a great one. Here's a good question, that most of us should know: what defines one gait as unique from another? Or, in the case of the trot variations, what defines these variations as being the same gait? Karen Thomas, NC
