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Welcome to Heaven's Gait Paso Finos!
Enter the world of Paso Finos. The smooth riding horse.
Heaven's Gait is a "twin" set up of farms situated in Canterbury, part of the beautiful rugged South Island of New Zealand.
Soozn & John Grindell live in Springbank, North Canterbury. Linda McLachlan and Neil Carter are a little further south in Gordon's Valley, South Canterbury.
Who we are? Linda and Soozn are 2 best friends, closer than sisters, who worked together breeding Andalusians for over 20 years and now have moved on - to the ultimate pleasure horse, the Paso Fino. "After many years of competitive showjumping, eventing and dressage, followed by more years of classical dressage training we found that we no longer wanted to be stuck, fenced in a dressage arena, but wanted to explore the beautiful country we live in." After bumping around the trails for a few years on trotting horses, Soozn visited Soho Pasos. She rode La Arcilla (Pixie) and it was love at first ride. So smooth, so effortless. After riding some more of Soho's horses, Soozn spent the drive home plotting to buy the very horse she had fallen in love with, the first Paso she had ever ridden. In a short time La Arcilla was settled in her new home with Soozn and became "Pixie". It wasn't too long after that, that Linda had a ride on Pixie, fell equally hard for these awesome little horses..... and the vision of Heaven's Gait was born. The search was on for a horse for Linda. We decided that we should import a mare and bring some frozen semen into New Zealand for our two mares. But fate has a way of making itself heard. Having seen a possible mare, the two of us started looking for a stallion to use. The exclamations when we found WarSong while we were on the phone to each other surfing the net were classic! When we tracked him down (his photo was on an extinct website) and found he was not available for frozen semen but could be for sale...well the decision was a no-brainer. But then we had the dilemma of Soozn having nothing gaited to ride when Pixie was being bred...so back to WarSong's owner to purchase his sister Savannah for Soozn to ride, while Linda rides WarSong and Pixie makes us some beautiful babies. |
What we do? We have our Pasos for our own pleasure so that we can trek around the
South Island, and go places the average person never gets to see - while
we sit in comfort. We primarily ride, but also plan to breed what is probably the best, the ultimate, pleasure riding horse in the world. We have searched the world for the best horses we could find for the purpose which we want them for.... which is pleasure riding, trekking and trail riding (including Endurance rides). We want our horses to gait naturally and have a "smokin' largo". Largo
is the fast version of the Paso gait and is as fast as an ordinary horse
canters. We have Pixie who is from the best show lines in the world and we have WarSong and Savannah who descend from older lines more suited to pleasure riding. We want to breed calm, forward, smooth Pasos who will hold themselves proudly in self carriage but not be too highly strung and hot like some of the full show lines. Mixing the class and style of the show lines with the calmness and smoothness of the pleasure lines will, we believe, produce the ultimate in comfort and rideability. If you have physical problems that affect your riding, the Paso Fino could be the horse for you. The gentle vibration you feel when riding them seems to improve back and hip problems. Soozn says that when her back feels sore she knows it's time to have a ride and comes back not just refreshed, but with her back miraculously healed. You can ride for hours and not get tired as you would on a horse that trots. Because of the footfall (that of a walk) the Paso Fino is a very sure-footed horse to ride, they rarely stumble and you feel like you are riding a Ferrari - with 4-wheel-drive! |
