Rohan Stables

Reflections of Rohan

Peruvians - 400 hundred years ago.....

Courtesy of: Raul Augusto del Solar Kreitz

That is the number that we can say that the Peruvian Paso blood was bred, and it was strictly bred for a working animal and a war animal. In both cases the most important things were good hooves and very good endurance, so much that the horses chosen for breeding were the horses that will die before quitting going.  So we have to understand that in the last 100 years because of the ease of traveling by vehicles and the lack of use of horses for battle the selections for breeding changed the focus to more a luxury and pleasure and recreation animal and a traveling companion by choice and not necessity.

60+ years ago the ANCPCPP was created and with that the selection of horses for show purposes was created too, meaning that from that time the selection of Peruvian Pasos was focused on what were the results of the shows.  We changed the idea from how much a horse could work in one day to how can this horse do in a class at a show. That meant that now breeders were focusing more on beauty and quality of gait even trying to increase the size to please the tastes of some buyers.  Consequently with each new generation of judges coming and the old generations passing on, the big size of the horses has become the norm for the newer judges to the point that you never hear one of the new judges say that any horse is too big but the normal sized horses they do say are small and many new judges are favoring the big horses. 

So what we have now are a lot of Peruvian Paso horses and more being bred to be big. what does this mean?  It means that we have a 14 hand horse with ball of his 400n years of bred in and selected for brio in a body that is 1/4 percent larger than his bones and joints and system was designed and evolved for.

The Peruvian Paso horse will not stop or balk or slow down when he is tired or hurting like a quarter horse or any other breed that has not had that 400 years of selection.

We also have the training methods of the 14 hand 800 pound horse with his bones and joints that will support that heavy training in bodies 25% bigger and 300 to 400 pounds heavier but the joints and bones are the same design and density because you can make a horse 25% bigger and heavier in 2 generations but it takes about 50 to alter the internal systems.  So many times now we have the body of a heavy truck sitting on the wheels and tires and frame and suspension system of a sports coupe and we don't want problems and we want it to last for 30 years of working. 

The best and strongest and most long lived Peruvian Paso horses I have and have had are all no more than 14'3" including the stallions and most are/were under that. They carry me like a feather and no problems. My advice to help to improve the breed with the public is to attack this problem of too big by a program to educate and advise people to breed normal size to normal size or normal size to big but never big to big.  Mare owners should take a measuring tape and use it on their mares and then use it on the stallion they want to breed and don't breed any stallion over 15 hands period.

----------------------------------------------------------
 

KrF Centavo de Plata