Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

If you have to depend on your horse for travel, for work and yout have to
spend many hours in the saddle day after day you want a light saddle horse
with a gait that is comfortable to ride - no matter if it is called an Arab,
a TWH, a Morgan, a saddlebred, etc. The the old time breeders valued and
bred for those traits. A hundred years ago the "funky looking gait" people
are talking about here was very valued in horses used for riding - now very
few people know what it is. 

As far as crossing gaited Arabs with a TWH, there was once a trotter ( could
have been a pacer - don't have the book in front of me now and I probably
chose the wrong name for his spelling :-)  )  named "Black Allen." He wasn't
worth a darn on the track pulling a sulky because he would break into this
funky gait. They could not use hobbles to keep him out of it since it was
a square 4 beat gait. He was TB on top and Morgan on bottom and was registered
as a Standardbred (he could meet the "standard"). Someone decided to try
to breed him to the gaited stock at the time in the middle Tennessee valley.
 What came out was an absolutely fantistic saddle horse with a very comfortable
gait. Because of that old Black Allen has become know as Allen F1 - the first
horse on the list of foundation stock for the TWH. He produced two great
horses - Roan Allen and Hunter's Allen. Most every TWH today goes back to
one of these two stallions. There are a couple 100 horses that are listed
as TWH  foundation stock but old track reject Black Allen had a tremendious
influence on the breed - especialy in the early days. The other horse that
when into the mix were assortments of TB, standardbred (i.e. muts :-) ),
Morgans and the Narraganset ( the breed that carried Paul Revere on his midnight
ride ), Cananian pacers and any other horse that could be used to produce
a good horse. There were several families of horses that were dominate and
there is a lot of commonality in the foundation stock of the TWH and the
American Saddlebred (especially the five gaited saddlebred).  I suspect the
only reason Arabs weren't used much is there weren't many around in that
area at that time. 

So you never know what a "funky gait' will get you. Too bad we'll lost the
giated Arabs. 

Cheers
Truman

Heidi Smith wrote:
> > There are too many variables, however, to tell. In general when you
> > cross an Arab with a walking horse you don't get the gait. If the Arab
> > is gaited and will gait free in the pasture, maybe yes.
> >   
>
> That's because in the modern gene pool, the Arabs with that sort of
> capability are a tiny minority, and in fact, the majority now are being bred
> away from that sort of "jack of all trades" riding horse standard that the
> old-timers strove so hard to maintain.
>
> Heidi