In mid 2008 we bought five Costarricense de Paso horses into the United States. We have them here at Hill Country Peruvian in Texas and we are going to see what we can do to create the breed.

When I was in Costa Rica I met the President of ASCACOPA which is the Association for Costarricense de Paso horses. They still have an open registry and what they do is take horses and for example, they breed to an Andalucían and if it comes out with the correct gait then it is still called Costarricense de Paso and they will micro chip them at age three.  

One of the things we have done is started an Association for the Costarricense de Paso in the United States and have established that here in Texas. We hope to breed some of the Peruvians to the Costarricenses de Paso and see if we can get the Costarricense's gait or if we get the Peruvian gait. One of the interesting things was, in looking at some very high-end Costarricenses de Paso, I noticed that some of them had the lateral gait when they were in deep sand and were functioning and moving like the Peruvians rather than the Costarricenses. On hard ground they moved with the diagonal gait and they were definitely Costarricenses de Paso. 

It is our target to have judges and the President of the ASCACOPA to come to the United States and judge the horses that we create here; to give them points and see whether they qualify as foundation members of the Costarricense de Paso breed in the United States.

We will do like they do in Costa Rica, because one of the things in Costa Rica that happens a lot is somebody will have a stallion and across the river there is a guy with a bunch of great mares and the stallion will jump the fence, swim the river and go breed all the mares and they will come out with these half Costarricenses horses. Some of them have enough Costarricense blood in them that they actually function and walk like the Costarricenses de Paso, look a great deal like them and so they use them as part of the breeding standards by which they increase the stamina of the breed which I think is probably a good thing.

A lot of breeds have been so inbred that they have got weaknesses. I studied a book which showed that the Kings of Spain would bring in other horses from other breeds when they noticed that their stock was getting weak in certain areas and bring in strength. It actually shows in the history books that the Andalucían were created by bringing in these other stocks and strength was what they were breeding for in those days. Today we are so fixating on the pure bred that we have lost some of the strengths of the animal.

- from an interview with Owner, Gary Douglas