FAQs
 
What is a mountain horse?
Rocky Mountain Horse Association (RMHA)
Mountain Pleasure Horse Association (MPHA)
Kentucky Mountain Saddle Horse Association (KMSHA)
 
A mountain horse is any horse registered in one of the associations listed above. Although the basic beginnings of each association reflects some of the native Kentucky Mountain Horses' genetic pool, the orientation, focus and underlying philosophies and beliefs of each association is different and will continue to become more different as determined by the associations' breeding directions, patterns, and controlling practices. One association is not superior to another; each is defined by the paths it chooses and by what it is producing.
 
What is a mountain horse?
 
All breeds of horses have several gaits and speeds at which they can perform those gaits. The smoothness of the gait is determined by the timing, footfall pattern, suspension and support. People tend to confuse the "gait" (which describes timing of the footfall) and the "speed" at which the gait is performed.

Simply put, a gait is "the walk gene run wild"--a walk gene that has been strengthened by successive generations of breeding until a horse is produced that literally "walks" right up through the speed at which a normal horse would do a two beat intermediate gait of the trot.
 
What's so great about a mountain horse's gait?
 
Unlike trotting horses, mountain horses have a smooth gait which can be ridden without posting or bouncing in the saddle. There is no bounce because of the nearly even timed, patterns of the footfalls. The motion of a horse at a walk (or in the super-fast walk we call a gait) causes the human pelvis to move in the same rhythm as when we walk. It is a natural movement for the body as opposed to the trot, which is uncomfortable and has no corresponding equivalent to our body’s movement.

Physically challenged people and people with knee and back injuries often find riding a gaited horse therapeutic, because the rhythm of the horse on their bodies is the same motion as walking, and their tendons and muscles are stretched and strengthened toward normalcy.