Tolt: Thokki's First Lesson with Gudmar

This is a private lesson that Gudmar gave Thokki starting him on tolt. This is not a "how-to" but a document of what the lesson was actually like. I felt that it was so rich in content I wanted to share that it deserved to be seen in its full length with just a few edits for continuity.

To me, this session is a Rosetta Stone, the link between classical dressage and Icelandic gait training. I think it would be very helpful for riders and trainers with "regular" horse backgrounds to view a few times if they want a bridge to understand tolt. You can get a baseline for where Thokki was in his dressage training from the fourth video of this playlist, "An Icelandic in a Dressage World (he's the little guy!)" at    • An Icelandic in a Dressage World (he's the...  .

Thokki was bred by Sarah Jones and at the time of the video was 5 years old. He had been started by Amanda Rossiter at Shinto Farm and had been trained in the conventional gaits. Sarah brought him to a two-day clinic with Gudmar Petursson and this was a private lesson for Gudmar to meet Thokki the day before.

The video is in HD. If you have the bandwidth, I invite you to sit back and watch it full screen in High Definition video.