>So you never know what a "funky gait'
will get you. Too bad we'll lost the giated Arabs.
They're not lost--just rare. And it is the concern over the
possibility of the loss of riding traits (the ability to gait being only a minor
part of that) that causes some of us to be "preservation breeders." Too
many people conjure up a visual of scaggy stunted horses in the back
pasture with three eyes and all their legs coming out of the same hole, with
only one name in their pedigrees--when in fact, the goal of
real preservation breeding is to maintain the traits and genes within
the breed that make good riding horses. And thank heavens for sports such
as endurance, dressage, cutting, jumping, etc. that cause people to WANT horses
with those traits--and for the participants in those sports who more and more
are learning that they need to seek out breeders who breed for those traits in
order to have the best chances of finding those traits.
