I was recently sent this question and thought is was such
a good one I felt I would post my response here to share.
Hello George,
My goodness this is the first time that I have actually had a horse
person ask this question. It's always been the non-horse folks asking this
and the horse community should be asking this more often actually.
Ok here is my opinion on the definition, my explanation.
ALL horses are gaited to me, the walk is a gait , the trot is
a gait, the canter is a gait, to me any forward movement due to and impulsion
of the body and legs in varying amounts of energy of a horse is. But since
we do have horses that do other kinds of forward movements beside
the 3 basic gaits, the industry long ago pulled out the term " Gaited"
to be applied to them specifically. So in the gaited horse world this means
they can do other forward movements besides or in addition
to what their other Non-gaited Breed counterparts can do.
So " Gaited " is a catch all term for theses horses and there
are many characteristics that separate a lot of variations of these different
movements besides the basic three. They are separated by variations in
Lateral use of legs in pick up and /or set down, diagonal use of legs in
pick up and/or set down, independent use of legs in pick up and/or set
down, footfall sequences, support phase sequences and timings of foot falls.
There are many terms for the varying gaits, to name a few would be
the running walk, fox trot, saddle rack, rack. Lots of Breed Assoc.'s
have their own terms for their breeds signature gaits, but many gaits can
be the same in characteristics. An example would be the Rack is the
same as the Icelandic Tolt.
Some other terms used also in trade for the word " Gaited" in
the gaited horse industry can be, Soft Gaited, Smooth Gaited, Easy
Gaited.
Hope this is of some help and I sure enjoyed answering this one!
Warmest,
Liz
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