#and went home with the revelation that the saddle she'd been riding with hindered her horse juuuust that last little bit

[islenskihesturinn]

Had a little rage moment (privately in my car) after my second day of saddle fitting.

On the second day someone brought in a Tennessee Walking Horse. Me and my team were working on another horse so didn't get much from how that consult went.

Later I heard that the horse was lame as all hell, but that the owner claims that that's "just his gaitedness".

I didn't explode with everyone around me. I just calmly said that that's a severe lack of knowledge of gaitedness, never mind horses in general.

But once I was on the main road where I could step on the gas I screamed out loud, in my car, and hated the world just a little bit, and reminded myself that this is also part of trying to make the world a little better.

Maybe I'm lucky to have ridden quite a few Icelandic horses in my life that I can hear and feel the difference in the varying degrees of tölt a horse can show, and that I definitely know when a horse is lame or even just a little 'off'.

I'm just baffled that people can look at their horse, can have professionals look at their horse, can have a class of people with a collective shit-ton of experience look at your horse and then still, still claim that lameness is simply the gaitedness of the horse.