Following on from the 'Tennessee Walking Horse' thread....

[pipper]

I googled it - the ones that were showing the high stepping action and sitting down behind with the people in the long coats, if found very very disgusting but also a bit scary looking!!!
But then i went further down the google page and found some you tube vids of ones for sale and they looked 'fairly' normal??? although a bit strange. But nothing like the ones in the show.
Now - how are the 'normal' trail rider walking horses trained? is it in the same awful cruel way the others are 'trained'? or are they bred to walk/trot like that?

thanks

 

[111ex111]

Tennesse walking horse is a bred that doesnt have a 'trot' gait, it either walks, has a 'fast' walk or canters.
They are bred like that, so the normal ones your talking about have not been trained.

The ones that have been trained to over exaggerate the 'fast' walk are the ones that have been abused, although I think there are trainers who dont use cruelty to get the same result. I think this is right going by what I have seen/read