
Some purebred Andalusians also have extra gaits, so that a crossbreeding of Iberian horses into the Paso breed is promising.
But America also produced some gaited horses willing to perform. The Tennessee Walker has been bred in the southern states of the USA since the beginning of the 19th century and is also becoming increasingly popular in Germany. The Tennessee Walker is very comfortable to ride, even over long distances, and has a friendly, people-oriented character. At a height of 1.50 - 1.60 metres, his character makes him a horse for timid riders or beginners. The typical gait of these horses is the walk, which one must imagine as an enormously ground-covering, fast step.
The töltender trotter is native to Germany. It was not officially recognised as a breed until 1996. Since the beginning of the seventies, the gait of these horses has been used to train a trotting riding horse. In this way it is often possible for people experienced in gaits to turn a trotter that is too slow for the racetrack into a very comfortable riding horse. In the meantime, however, horses are not only bred for the racetrack, but specifically for gaited qualities.
The origin of gaited horses is seen in the mutation of English horses. According to the current state of research, Vikings in medieval England encountered wild horses that had this mutation for gait and brought the wild horses with them to Iceland. The Vikings recognised the value of this horse gait and thus laid the foundation for gaited horse breeding.
And we are grateful to them for that. Over time, a diverse cosmos of gaited horses developed, which, in addition to the horse breeds already mentioned, produced the elegant American Saddlebred, the tough Mangalarga Marchador, the enduring Missouri Foxtrotter and the indefatigable Rocky Mountain Horses.