I was worried you’d feel bad about it and that’s why I asked… I’ve been doing a million lessons most days anyways so it’s not like I’m slaving away just to get that quest done… It kind of just happens.
I don’t want to add complete randos there like a lot of people do, I want to at least know they’re real people and not bots…
Yeah - that's tough - 2 very different sportsThat's awesome! I played slow-pitch until my last year in high school, when they abruptly swapped us over to fast-pitch, to the general confusion of everyone involved.
That’s a great memory!I'm...not sure.
That's not as tragic as it sounds, I promise. It's mostly that I have a really bad memory.
Probably the greatest moment in my life happened when I was not a Lit-approved age. I was at a smallish horse show, and I was riding my favorite horse in a championship class. For some reason, a lot of the spectators decided that they liked me and started cheering for me and shouting my number at the judges. (This is just something people do at gaited horse shows here, no clue why.) I actually managed to fuck around and win the thing, and I got a standing ovation on my victory lap with the championship ribbon pinned to my horse's bridle.
It seems like something out of a dream now because it was so long ago, but my parents remember it, so that means it must've really happened!
Thanks, this was enlightening. Loved how you described it as seeing whose horse picks up their legs the highest. That’s the level of explanation I need to understand horse things.Ok, this is may make no sense at all, so I apologize beforehand.
It's nothing so interesting as jumping or dressage, unfortunately. I always wanted to get into both of those things, but never got to!
A gaited horse is a type of horse that (generally, with the exception of American Saddlebreds) does not trot. Instead of a two-beat trot, they perform a four-beat gait which is essentially the same thing amongst all the various breeds but called something different, depending on which breed we're talking about. I showed Tennessee Walking Horses, whose people called it a running walk, and Racking Horses, whose people called it a rack. (You can make the argument that the two things are a little different, but it's mostly just aesthetically speaking, not technically speaking.) Saddlebreds, on the other hand, both trot and perform the four-beat gait, but this has to be trained into them. For other types of gaited horses, the four-beat gait is natural, and it's considerably more comfortable to ride over a distance than a trot is.
So the point of (most) gaited horse shows is to demonstrate two things: The purity of the gait and action. Action is basically just how high they can pick their feet up. For some breeds, this is all four feet, and for others, like the ones I rode, it just includes the front feet. Rear-end action in the breeds I rode was more like the hind end of the horse dropping down so that the front could lift up, if that makes any sense.
There are multiple ways to make this happen. Most of it is by mechanical means, like big shoes. Some of it is through cruelty (acids applied to the area below the ankles which produce pain), which, ultimately, was one of the things that led me to quit the sport altogether. They have inspectors who are supposed to check for that, but their validity is...questionable. At any time, I could have just about guaranteed you that I was the only one in the entire show grounds not riding dirty because that was how widespread it was. (And I'm not trying to make myself sound noble and enlightened here. I just didn't have the heart for it, ultimately.) I think there's been a crackdown on it in the years since I left, but I don't really follow it anymore, so I don't know how much of that is a real crackdown and how much of it is just talking to make themselves look better to outsiders.
Ok, I told you all that to tell you this: The point of a gaited horse show is to ride around the ring, demonstrating your gaits, and see whose horse picks their feet up the highest without breaking gait. Sounds boring, but really isn't. It's very exciting, and that's how the industry has gotten away with their bullshit for so long. And to be honest, even when you're riding clean, there's nothing in the world that feels quite like it. The greatest Tennessee Walking Horses in the world could lift their front legs so high that you could see them over the top of a four-foot fence, so it's pretty impressive, if you don't think about it too much.
I do miss it sometimes. I don't miss all the insanity that went along with it because nobody who spends much time around horses is sane.
Hi.
I remember popping on here years ago when I thought I knew stuff and I saw you here.
Then I remembered you disappearing.
No question really. Just glad to see you're okay.
I am hoping you are in a better place and you are taking care of yourself.
