>>>i see he has his kickstand out. He can do a very fast rack but like my >>>Jas, you would have to beat him to make him do it on cue because he is >>>just so laidback, and why aggravate and "punish" a laidback horse is how >>>I feel, i mean we all have horses with different horsenalities, best to >>>use one cut out for the job I think.
I don't think Tivar would have ever discovered any sort of rack on his own had he not had "tolt training" early in his life. It's just not close to being in his range of gaits. I HATE that phrase. I absolutely despise it. Any horse can be forced into a rack, but some never should. Tivar is one of them. I noticed when I got him two years ago that he would sometimes put himself in that dreaded "tolt position" to trot, even in the pasture, if things got a little tense. His head would go up, his neck extremely ewed, and his back would go way hollow. The dips behind his shoulders were much more pronounced then than now, probably due to muscle atrophy because he'd go into that frame too easily. After we treated him for ulcers and restarted him, I don't think I ever saw him trot that way again. He may sometimes, but it's certainly not his default. Looking back, of course, we'll never know all the answers to this chicken-and-egg situation...how much did the stress of the "tolt-training" (shudder) contribute to his ulcers, and how much of the poor posture come from the tolt training, and how much came from the pain of the gastric ulcers. I'm sure it all became a cycle. >>> but Teev and my Jaspar, they have racked, Jaspar like twice or maybe >>> four times in 11 years, Teev twice in two years, and it was HARD and >>> FAST and HEAVY and crashing sounding, but smooth. That doesnt make >>> sense. But with both horses, the head was unnaturally HIGH and the neck >>> tense and fixed, just rigid, the whole body seemed just rigid with loud >>> pounding feet. There was not a sensation of ease. I don't think we can say this enough. ANY horse can be taught to rack. Tivar is smart - he could learn anything from the mental-capacity angle. And he also wants to be a good boy. What a BAD combination - a horse who wants to please, with a mind like a steel trap, lousy conformation for gait...and "tolt training." If there was ever a recipe for ulcers... Ann didn't know all this then, but she knows now, and WE know now. BTW, Tivar is over his mouth-phobia enough that he let me slip my fingers inside his mouth recently, when we were sharing a quiet moment, just chillin'. I was able to slide my fingers around to where those awful mouth ulcers were, and the scars are still there. He didn't react at all...and this is a horse that knocked me down once two years ago when I accidentally touched his nose too hard. He was dramatically nose-shy when we got him. When I had his teeth checked a few weeks after we got him, the equine dentist said the ulcers had been there a long time, judging by how deep and how scarred they were - they were still raw then. Obviously the pain from the mouth ulcers are gone, but the scars remain. They are just inside the corners of his mouth, near the bars...right where a bit hauling on his mouth would have rubbed. (We also treated him for gastric ulcers, based on his other symptoms, and the improvement in his attitude was marked.) When I get short-tempered about traditional/show-type Icelandic riding, this is why. The abuse has a name on it in my pasture: Tivar. Karen Thomas, NC
