Can Gaited Horses Gait in a Round Frame? Part 2.

Today, everything I’ve felt and observed with gaited horses was shifted... again.

I started off the ride by adjusting the little gaited mare, Cleo, longitudinally. We worked on tempo control out of my seat with no rein aids, and then I worked on asking her to lengthen her spine and fill up the contact and then gathering her back up. Once she could make these adjustments as well as stay in front of my leg aid, we were ready to gait.

Like I had been doing, I deepened my seat and slightly raised my reins in to the corners of her mouth, while I simultaneously cued her with my alternating leg aids, to encourage her to move forward in to gait. Today, which marks day three of working towards sustaining her gait at length, she quickly went up in to the gait and held it for 4-5 strides. When I slowed/weighted my seat, she came right back to the working walk. We did this a number of times before I gave her a nice, stretchy, walk break. I was really pleased with how quickly she responded today and how keen she was to remember all that we had worked on last week.

After the stretch break, when she was walking around on the buckle, I started to prepare my seat for the gait, prior to gathering my reins. The minute my seat and lower legs began to cue her to gait, she went right up in to her gait on a long rein, on the buckle.

Mind. Blown...

Everything I thought I had discovered and researched about gaited horses having to lift their necks high in order to gait, all went out the window in that moment. I didn’t have to do anything with the reins... in fact, contact was soft and completely allowing... and she just opened herself right up and in to her running walk.

At this point, my observations will now return me to the theory that if a horse is meant to gait naturally, he should be able to do it without any “manipulating” from the rider. As seems to be the case with all riding, the better I can do at staying out of the way (while remaining in good alignment and balance), the better the horse will be able to gait.