Mounted search and rescue

["T'mi Fi" <tfinkle@erols.com>]

Linda,

A very good online source about gaited (riding) horses can be found at 
<www.Lizgraves.com> There is a list of articles that contains a variety 
of information about gaited horses. Liz explains a gaited horse as:

“ALL horses are gaited to me, the walk is a gait , the trot is a gait, 
the canter is a gait, to me any forward movement due to and impulsion of 
the body and legs in varying amounts of energy of a horse is. But since 
we do have horses that do other kinds of forward movements beside the 3 
basic gaits, the industry long ago pulled out the term " Gaited" to be 
applied to them specifically. So in the gaited horse world this means 
they can do other forward movements besides or in addition to what their 
other Non-gaited Breed counterparts can do.

So " Gaited " is a catch all term for theses horses and there are many 
characteristics that separate a lot of variations of these different 
movements besides the basic three. They are separated by variations in 
Lateral use of legs in pick up and /or set down, diagonal use of legs in 
pick up and/or set down, independent use of legs in pick up and/or set 
down, footfall sequences, support phase sequences and timings of foot 
falls. There are many terms for the varying gaits, to name a few would 
be the running walk, fox trot, saddle rack, rack. Lots of Breed Assoc.'s 
have their own terms for their breeds signature gaits, but many gaits 
can be the same in characteristics. An example would be the Rack is the 
same as the Icelandic Tolt.”

Here is a list of popular Gaited Horse Breeds: Albanian, American 
Saddlebred, American Walking Pony, Andean Curly Horse, Fox Trotting 
Horse, Gaited Morgan, Gaited Mules, Icelandic, Mangalarga Marchador, 
Mountain Horses, North American Single-Footing Horse, Paso Fino, 
Peruvian Paso, Racking Horse, Spanish Mustang, Spotted Saddle Horse, 
Standardbred, Tennessee Walking Horse and Walkaloosa

Ride safe,
T'mi

David leadbetter wrote:

> When I think of gaited I think of trotters or pacers,as in harness racing
> Does this refer to something different in the US.
> Cheers
> Linda [Australia]