classical gaited riding

I've been meaning for some time to write something about training and riding gaited horses, and whether it is possible to reconcile that with classical riding.

I've been too busy with university and work to give it too much thought until recently. I've started to gather some thoughts on the subject now and have a lot of related, but unordered thoughts on the matter which I want to include in the post. But when I started writing down some of these, I came to the conclusion that I will need to do a little bit more research first. I hate to "shoot from the hip" and then find out that I expressed myself badly, quoted wrongly or made any other errors.

I've had a fair bit of time off from reading horse books. I went through a stage of disillusionment and general discontent with my own riding on the one hand, and with what I see out there, being peddled as "all the answers" , "the quick fix" and "the latest & greatest". Although I didn't manage to spend much time working with horses or riding for fun for the last year, I have someone regained the fire in my belly to learn, to do, to teach, to write...

Consequently, I have horses in work again, with more planned for the coming months. I have new personal goals in terms of learning, riding and writing. Riding is fun. It's a good feeling.

 

Flamenca (photo by Yvonne Lehey)

So please bear with me, the gaited horses and classical riding piece is in the pipeline!