Is the high stepping front foot action natural or do they use the methods that some Tenn Walker trainers use - heavy chains, soreing, etc, to get that step???
The Mountain Horse's show gaits are natural. They are not allowed to use chains or weighted/padded shoes like TWH do.
Their gait is so pretty. And its good that its natural. It does'nt always look it. They are very pretty, i saw some at the fair.
This gait is not the natural un-emphasized gait of the Rocky. Granted you can hear the 4 beats in this video but the higher rack step is emphasized likely due to training and is not the natural untrained (unaltered) gait of this breed. The rider has less bounce with the Show Walk than the Pleasure Gait. There are different speeds with the pleasure and show gaits but if not trained to emphasize the rack step, the Rocky generally does not on his own. The true gait is very smooth and NO bouncing in the saddle. Normally, the smoothness exists in all speeds. The rider's head remains smooth like a straight line, like smooth as glass. Although this is a fine looking horse, I personally feel that it is not the indicative example of the breed. Please feel free to look at the following link for the typical, un-emphasized natural trained gait of the Rocky Mountain Horse. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3uVrK6wXsg Thank you.
I am sorry to be making an additional comment on this particular video about this RMH but I have thought more about it and still I feel that this particular gait was trained to be a rack high step. If one looks in the show manual on gaits, it does not show this high step. It may be that this particular gait is trained with artificial methods to get the rack step versus the natural gait the horse does, which is usually not the rack step. I included a link to my stallion that does the natural un-emphasized gait which is in line with the breed standard. Thank you for your time.
I thought the step was very high, I have Rockies that have performed/showed and that is not a requirement to step that high. But it did show the difference in each gait very well.
This horse's gait is breaking above the knee which is NOT supposed to happen according to the RMHA definition of the gait and in the show rule book. This means that the hoof in lifting higher than the knee.
It was neat "hearing" the hoof beats, as well as watching. But it is hard to watch and see, when I am not sure what to be looking for.