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As I recall you have Standardbreds right? If you do what you felt was most likely a rack. Some of the best speed rackers in the US are STB so you can get an extremely smooth fast gait. A lot of US STB carry the racking gene so I would guess it is present in your area as well. You probably just need to help bring him out.

The basics of getting a STB to rack are get the horse working in collection. Once you have the horse working well in collection you use your seat and legs to drive them forward. A lot of times when you get the rack the first time it is in a situation just like you mentioned. You are collecting the horse up to control the gait but he is being driven forward or is driving himself forward. Once you've got him working well in a collected walk and trot use your seat and legs to drive him into the bridle.

Some people believe you must use a gag or shanked bit to get the rack on a STB, but I've always used a snaffle without any problem. Some people will also play with shoeing, but again my STB have always been barefoot. I've done some minor angle/toe adjustments to help gait but nothing drastic. Your use may vary and you may find you need a bit more to get him racking reliably and then move him back natural.

If you go to youtube and search for Speed Racking Standardbred you can see some horses really putting on the speed in a very smooth fun to ride gait. It takes some time to work up to a fast rack, but it is so much fun.

There is an ongoing disagreement among the owners of various breeds as to whether any particular breed's gaited abilities are natural, taught, or forced. "MY horse has it naturally, YOUR horse was forced to do it!" Some of the teaching methods that have been used to force a pace do indeed look dangerous, working with hobbles. Sometimes special shoeing is used. I would not recommend anything like that.

We have had Saddlebreds that understood that wiggling your butt meant "rack". They did it naturally, without being taught. I would bet that your Fjord's ancestry might carry a recent cross with an Icelandic horse, or have some other built-in reason for a tendency to that kind of gait. It's commonly found in many horses in the breeds derived from the Narragansett Pacer. That's presumably where ASB, TW, etc. got it.

Try lifting the head and wiggling your butt.

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STB is off the Narragansett Pacer (among other breeds). You've got a racking horse hidden in there.

The STB is a horse that can do a mile at the trot (or the pace) in a set amount of time. I think it may have been three minutes, but is now two. The horse in "Jingle Bells" ("Just get this bob-tailed Bay, two-forty for his speed, hitch him to an open sleigh and crack! you'll take the lead.") is an early (1857) STB.

The Morgan is not a racking horse, but someone thirty years ago was breeding huge get from his ordinary-sized Morgan stud. Turns out he was using a huge ASB stud that looked like his Morgan. People caught on, and would yell, "RACK ON!" at those half-Morgans at shows.

If you have anywhere near you a long road that is slightly downhill you could take him out on it and try this, start with a flat walk and unless he is super side sensitive. Get in a rhythm with him, as the right front shoulder is moving out, you squeeze lightly with your left leg and then with your right leg when the left shoulder is moving out. Get into the rhythm with him and you may be able to get that other gait out of him.

A lot of times that has worked for me when I have had the feeling that a horse would move into a single foot or a running walk. It will aslo lengthen a horses stride and I have been able to move a horse that is a slow walker into a horse that will line out and walk faster with this method.

Try it and let us know if it worked??

Also if he is that run through the bit kind that will not settle down and canter or trot relaxed on a slack rein you might try this if you are tough enogh to hang in for a long long ride.

Ask him to walk or trot and if he takes off and gets rushy, just take the inside rein with a take and release method, do not hold his head around, take it and release and make it stay around so you

are working in a circle about 12 feet dia.

Do not take up or pull on the outside rein to slow him down. You want him to slow down on his own with a slack rein and If you try to slow him down that will defeat the purpose.

Just hang in there and know that you can outride him. When if you are tough enough, he will ease up and relax with a loose rein, just sit deep and let him straighten out, If he rushes, circle him again but never try to slow him down. This method will not work if you are a wussy quitter.

I have done this with quite a few OTTB's and I have all of them working relaxed and quiet in a short length of time.

A method I have also used on the ones that tend to be the stampeed runaways is to just get into a large arena, take a deep seat be prepared for a long fast ride and just let them run till they want to stop. It can get kind of scary if the arena is smaller and they will drop a shoulder on the ends and sometimes I would try to slow them up a little.

Let us know what worked for you regardless of what method you used??

Just take a deep seat and decide that you will outride him no matter how long it will take. When he will slow down and take a few strides on a loose rein, relax and let him straigten out