Opinions please

He looks honest and forward - I am not sure how comfortable he is in his tack - he is a little bit choppy and short in some views.
 
Landing so consistently disunited would indicate to me that it had a lameness problem behind as it's a sure sign that something is hurting
 
Thanks for your responses, any more are welcomed.

I will add now that he is a standardbred. Would this account for the choppiness / inconsistent paces? I was kind of thinking that it may improve with a lot of flat work, getting him working from behind and focussing on proper trot and canter paces.
To be honest, I didn't really think about a lameness / uncomfortable issue, but that is probably because I was (blindly) looking down the 'pacer' route when I watched it :s

Any more thoughts from anyone?
 
When I watched video, I thought "what an honest clean jumping novice horse but what's with all the trotting between fences?" Then I read it was a standardbred (ex trotter)? and it all made sense. That's almost certain what's causing the breaking pace. It will come but it usually takes a long time, especially if they've been trained and raced. Obviously check tack etc but most at least haven't had backs ruined by bad riding! Depends what you want it for but looks to have such a good attitude, I'd chance it and put in the work.
 
To me, as a seasoned Standie owner, he looks very nice!

He is surprisingly compact, usually their shoulders and quarters are in different counties. He's obviously green but with a bit more work the canter should come right.
 
My thoughts when I watched it was it was pacing. I thought the camera woman was quite smart focusing on the next fence a lot of the time and not showing the horses approach!

Personally I would not buy a horse that went like that. I do know some. It is very difficult to retrain them out of doing it and it looks very uncomfortable and not nice to ride.
 
I know nothing about the breed, but he seemed to enjoy popping around the fences, was looking through his bridle and looked honest.

Is it possible to train out the pacing etc, maybe, but he needs to come at the right price and would not be many people's cup of tea.
 
galaxy said:
Personally I would not buy a horse that went like that. I do know some. It is very difficult to retrain them out of doing it and it looks very uncomfortable and not nice to ride.
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It's actually surprisingly easy to stop them from pacing (although why anybody would want to remove the extra gait instead of embracing it I'll never know...). Some are more difficult than others - but then that's true of teaching all horses something or other, some 'get it' quicker than others. My mare was in harness from 2-4 and only seriously ridden end of last year and start of this year. She trots absolutely no problem now and I've not tried anything particularly special with her to get that. It's the idea that they're so difficult to retrain that caused me to set up my 'Life After Racing' article in the STAGBI newsletter, and the driving force behind the Facebook page. It's a sweeping generalisation that is wholly unfair on these horses. *sorry for the rant, I get really passionate about this :o*

It's also ridiculously comfortable to sit to, trust me, there were days when I was younger out hunting when I could do six hours of pacing and smirk at those who had trotted the whole time :cool:

Don't ever let the extra gait put you off. They're trained to use the pacing gait more than the other four - they can just as easily be trained to work in the other four gaits they were born with equally as well.
 
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