Bochica
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Resorte
IV
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History
Of The Paso Fino
The
Paso Fino, meaning "Fine Step" in English, was the mount of
the Spanish Conquistadors. It is the oldest true native
breed of horse in the Western Hemisphere.
Although
the ancestors of the present-day horse evolved and developed
in North America and spread to other parts of the world,
horses vanished from the New World during the Ice Age,
between 8,000 and 12,000 years ago, so Columbus discovered a
horseless America.
Nearly
500 years ago, on his second voyage from Spain, Columbus
brought a select group of mares and stallions from the
Provinces of Andalusia and Cordela, and settled them at
Santa Domingo. These horses were a mixture of Spanish Barb,
Andalusian and the now extinct Spanish Jennet, which not
only possessed an extremely comfortable saddle gait, but
also were able to pass this on to their offspring. The
result of the blending of these horses was to become known
as the Paso Fino breed, the horse with the four beat
gait.
They
became the foundation stock for the remount stations of the
Conquistadors. As Spanish settlers came to the New World,
they brought more Spanish horses. During the nearly 500
years that the Paso Fino horses have been selectively bred
throughout Puerto Rico, Cuba, the Dominican Republic,
Columbia, Brazil, and Peru, they have been called upon to
perform diverse roles, first in the conquest of and then in
the exploration and development of the
Americas.
The
Paso Finos came to the United States during the 1950's when
military families returning home from Puerto Rico imported a
few horses and their popularity grew. The American Paso Fino
is the product of crossing the Latin American horses with
the Caribbean horses, each having slight different
traits.
