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Morning all. You can blame GW for your cold, HairDog. (sarcasm)

About them gaited horses. I've been on a few trail rides with people riding walking/racking/gaited horses and where groups of walking/racking/gaited horse riders were on the same trails.

First, as a general rule, walking/racking/gaited horses don't mix well with quarter horses. People on the gaited horses want to be in that rack and its either a fast trot or a slow lope for the quarter horse. Either way, it can make for an unpleasant ride.

Second, I've been riding at places that were popular with the walking/racking/gaited crowd. It was kinda like the story about the tortoise and the hare. These guys would come roaring up behind us, literally run us off the road and tear off past us. A few minutes later, we would amble on by while they were resting their nags, just to repeat the whole thing all over again. We discovered that if we ventured off to the remote trails, we wouldn't see a single walking/racking/gaited horse. They seemed to prefer wide, easy roads to backwoods, single file trails.

Your story reminds me of the traffic around here. We have lots of single lane highways/roads. We have people (usually women , believe it or not) that will run up on you, flashing lights and honking and will zoom around, just to get stopped at the next traffic light.:')

I haven't ever been on the trail with a gaited horse, although my DIL says there is one around here that runs endurance.

I have a hard time seeing them climbing mountains and picking through rocks and boulders like we have here but I guess they could. I guess I have a prejudice against non-western horses. That's silly on my part, I'll have to be more open minded. I finally did admit Arabs were darn good horses after rescuing a couple and being around them.