I had a school of Dressage and Combined Training in Roswell, New Mexico. We boarded and trained horses, had a nice group of school horses as well. A young girl became my apprentice and brought her palomino gelding with her to our stable. His name was TBird. He could trot and had a little running walk kind of lateral gait, too! He was an angel in a horse suit. His owner had the chance to buy a colt to start and get a cute, young Appaloosa from her grandparents, so I bought TBird. What fun he was. Beginners were safe on him, more experiences riders could be challenged riding him because he adjusted to the level of the person on board. He would jump anything you pointed him to - even with a halter, bareback. We used him as a lead horse when a green horse needed confidence over a fence. He went to shows and clinics, did trail rides and pretty much everything anyone asked of him.
He had come through a dealer's yard. In those days, there were a lot of horse dealers and I was often out looking through their offerings for horses to train or for school mounts. There were never any horses better and very few as good as our TBird. My favorite TBird story was when we took him to Albuquerque to a Dressage clinic with a famous instructor. This man was a good teacher and was working with my apprentice on TBird. A little hollow through his back, TBird was difficult to truly collect in the trot and this clinician was a little frustrated with my student. He asked her to dismount, adjusted the stirrups and mounted to show us all how to do it "right". Funny old TBird! He picked up his lateral gait (a kind of rack mixed with foxtrot like movement) and would not do anything else with this man on board! When my student got back on (this was a horse she had known for years, of course), TBird trotted without any sign of lateral leg moves. We held back laughter - not at the teacher, but chuckles that would simply acknowledged TBird's obvious sense of humor! This is a photo of him with a student from WAY back.
