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Easy Gaited Horses, Lee Zeigler, Storey Press.

AIHA Book Reviews: The Ultimate Horse Behavior and Training Book, Linda Tellington-Jones (with Bobbie Lieberman) Traflagar Square Press.

I purchased both Easy Gaited Horses and The Ultimate Horse Behavior and Training Book hoping that they’d provide me with information on how to continue my work with Siggi. I was not disappointed – these books are “must haves” for those who are ground training and riding Icelandic horses. Together, the two can function as an indispensable reference source.

Both Zeigler and Tellington-Jones are nationally-recognized trainers and authors. Zeigler, who died in xxx, rode and trained gaited horses for 30 plus years and routinely gave clinics on gaited training throughout the U.S. and Germany. She also wrote about gaited horses for numerous publications including The Gaited Horse, Horse Illustrated, and Equus. And additionally, she posted a great deal of her writings on the Internet – many of her articles can be found on the Iceryder site.

Tellington-Jones’ broad-based areas of expertise are equine behavior, training, and animal body work. She developed the Tellington method (a system of training and healing horses that overrides resistance and strengthens the horse/human bond) three decades ago. Tellington-Jones has since authored 11 books which have been printed in 12 languages and has released 18 videos and DVD programs.

Zeigler’s book is for those Icelandic owners who wish to become more knowledgeable about gaits and gait training. The material in Easy Gaits is well-organized, and the sidebars, diagrams, and illustrations complement the well-written text material. Zeigler also makes ample use of headers. This makes her information comprehensible to two-dimensional thinkers, who like me, have a hard time grasping what hoof goes where, when.

Zeigler makes the process of figuring out gait recognition easier by first identifying gait characteristics. These are footfall sequence, footfall timing, hoof pick-up, hoof support sequence, and hoof-to-hoof weight transfer between the two front or traverse pair of hooves. (The traverse pairs are those which are straight across from one another, they can be either front or hind.) Zeigler uses these terms when talking about the walk, the flat-footed walk or flat walk, the tolt, the pace, the broken or stepping pace or amble, the saddle rack, or single-foot, or slow tolt, and the true tolt. She next anticipates my claim, that while knowing gait characteristics is one thing, that identifying them is another, by including a sidebar entitled “Seven Steps for Identifying a Gait without Slow Motion Video.” Eseentially, you: 1. Look at the legs on the right side of the horse. Look only at these two legs, one front, one hind. 2. Look at one hind leg and the opposite front leg. Look at only two diagonal legs. 3. Look at the hooves of the legs on the side of the horse closest to you. 4. Look at the bottom of the hooves on the legs diagonal from one another. (Right hind, left front.) 5. Look at the head and neck of the horse. 6. Look at the croup and tail. 7. And then add up the clues. Zeigler also covers anatomy, as this relates to biomechanics, movement, and confirmation of gaited horses.

The chapter entitled “The Pace Problem and How to Solve it,” was the most useful to me because the pace is Siggi’s gait of preference. The exercises in this chapter are broken down into three phases: “Reach to Relaxation,” “Reaching into Contact with the Bit,” and “Raising the Head and the Neck with Elastic Contact.” Zeigler does not in any way indicate that the information provided in this or like-chapters will provide fast and easy answers, rather, she offers a cautionary aside, noting, “The siren call of the quick fix of shoeing or other mechanical means of obtaining a specific gait or facsimile of that gait, may begin to appeal to you . . . (and) don’t associate that he can’t do anything but pace if doesn’t start doing the gait you want after only a week or two of work.” In other words, her implicit message is that breaking pace takes time, patience, and many hours on the ground or in the saddle.

Easy Gaits has two shortcomings, which interestingly enough, is why you should also consider purchasing Tellington-Jones’s book. First of all, the material is all in the third person. A first-person account would give this book added credibility, and increase reader interest. The second shortcoming is that the chapters labeled “Before You Ride,” and “Groundwork,” are too general -- this information can be found in more detail, in most horse training guides. A case in point: 13 pages of Easy Gaits is devoted to the subject of longeing. However, Zeigler does not fully describe or show how a longeline should be attached to the halter or bridle, nor does she present alternatives for those of who believe that the more circular nature of this training method is both mentally and physically hard on horses.

Tellington-Jones’s book has very little information on gaits or gaiting; however it has tons of information on training and behavior specifics. As importantly, Tellington-Jones’ methodology goes hand-in-hand with her stated beliefs about horse care and training, which is that together, “TTouches, ground work, and riding exercises “dramatically expand and improve a horses’ capacity for learning and cooperation, improves horse and rider balance and coordination, and deepens the horse-human bond.”

Like Easy Gaits, The Ultimate Horse Behavior and Training Book is extremely well organized. In Part I (An Overview of the Tellington Method) Tellington-Jones provides a sound rationalization for the theory that informs TTeam practices. The following two sections (Part II, “Behavior and Theory Issues, A to Z,” and Part III, “The Tellington Jones Method How-To Guide”) are more how-to in nature; however, they make more sense after reading Part I. Part II contains an A-Z Glossary; say if your horse is, like Siggi, low on the pecking order, you can go to this index, and easily find the page(s) that contain this information. And Part III contains information on the various TTouches and ground training exercises.

he central strength of The Ultimate Guide to Horse Behavior and Training is that Tellington-Jones offers sensible alternatives that lend themselves to the Icelandic horse’s gentle temperament and high intelligence. This is not coincidental – over the years she’s worked alongside Robyn Hood and Christine Schwartz, who since 1976 have, on a daily basis, trained and assisted others who train Icelandic horses.

A case in point – Tellington-Jones’s information on longeing is far more complete than Zeigler’s, in part because she does not, as Zeigler does, treat it as an isolated exercise. Rather, Tellington Jones suggests that longeing be done in conjunction with other TTouch methods. After defining what longeing is, (a classical method of putting the horse out on the end of a line and sending him around you in a circle) she talks about the reasons why she eschews this more time-honored method, noting that “Frequent longeing can lead to repetitive motion injuries, and even a slow trot can exacerbate musculoskeletal problems.” Additionally, “Longeing young horses can lead to splints and other injuries, and when done incorrectly with side reins, can cause dropped backs and ewe necks.”

She instead recommends that the horse owner teach the horse to walk, trot, and stop, and stand straight on a circle. Longing on an oval is also preferable to longeing on a circle. In addition, she suggests using a regular lead line and wand, and walking with the horse rather than stand still in the middle of a circle. This, says Tellington Jones, “. . . will help the horse keep his balance and make him mindful of his distance from the handler and where he is going.” Other training solutions include using the Joyful Dolphin, Dingo, and Homing Pigeon lead positions. For those who are unfamiliar with these stances more information is provided – here and elsewhere, key words and page numbers follow each instructional section.

Lastly, Tellington-Jones’s her biographical information and first-person anecdotes give the above statement more credibility. For example, short vignettes are interspersed throughout her book. In one such tale, she writes about attending a clinic in which she, a woman trainer, convinced a cowboy to use TTouches on one of his best, but hard-to-catch horses. Her suggestion, that he use earslides, worked. She writes: “The buckskin stood quietly with his head lowered, seeming to enjoy the work. When (the cowboy) quit working the ears and went to leave the corral, the horse came behind him to the gate he had to close the gate to keep him from following.”

Having now read both books cover-to-cover, I feel that I’ll do a better job training Siggi than I would have, had I not read them. Now that I have a more broad-based overview of the material, I’ll better be able to locate, and focus on training specifics.


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