Close

Strengths, Opportunities, & Weaknesses of the First Competition of Virtues of the Peruvian Paso Horse

By Fernando Risso Montes

The First Competition of Virtues of Peruvian Paso Horse in Mamacona was made with 40 registered horses that were distributed in 7 categories of up to 20 horses, mares, geldings and stallions competing in the same class. The virtues that have been contemplated for this first exercise were those of Brio, Arrogance, Smoothness, Termino, Drive, Harmony and Looseness. The objective of this First Competition of Virtues was supported by the current Board of Directors of the National Association of Breeders and Owners of the Peruvian Paso Horse was to achieve a greater understanding of the virtues for the attending public and thus, to achieve a unified criterion among all future aficionados.

         Consequently, we hope that this comparison will be organized in the future with the idea of improving year after year.  Likewise, we encourage other regional and international associations to commit themselves to carry out this type of exercises that in the long term will help in the knowledge of the Peruvian Paso horse.

         In this sense and with the idea of ​​doing a future work planned for analyze the current conjunctures in the Peruvian race we dare to perform a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses and Threats) regarding the future of this new type of competition. Diagnosing, identifying and analyzing the 4 SWOT points from this past event we will be able to improve the future Competition of Virtues exercise.

STRENGTHS:

1.We consider that the competition was an excellent means to individually teach the virtues of our horse and appreciate them in practice to align them with what is said in the theory about these virtues.

  • It was also an excellent setting to unify and rethink many criteria defining the meaning of several of the virtues among judges, breeders and fans of the Peruvian Paso Horse.
  • Finally, the Competition of Virtues was an excellent event to promote the benefits of the race included in this set of virtues .

OPPORTUNITIES:

  1. Separating the virtues individually and achieving a consensus regarding their real meaning between the theory and the practice we can differentiate them and not confuse them towards the public as it is usually seen in some support and conversations between amateurs, breeders and judges.
  2. The breed can be promoted in a simple and more didactic way for new interested parties who find it difficult to understand the Peruvian horse’s gait.
  3. It will be the ideal way to put an order of priorities in the analysis of a Peruvian horse and be able to give a greater importance to certain virtues compared to others and thus be able to achieve the much desired pattern in movement of the Peruvian Horse.

WEAKNESSES:

  1. Some tests were judged as a regular horse show class and actually the goal for that day was an interactive seminar where each judge could give the greatest amount of comments, criticism, doubts and questions about the virtues of turn to the public .
  2. There was not an interaction system where assistants could ask the judges about doubts or confusions about what happened in the competition.
  3. We do not have a current consensus on the meaning of some of the virtues within the judges, so it is necessary to hasten a general understanding of the meaning of each virtue and how it should be applied in practice. For this a teamwork of the Committee of Judges, Committee of the Race and Committee of Breeders is necessary.

THREATS:

  1. Resistance and oppositions of some aficionados to make new forms to analyze the animals. They argue that the way to understand the gait of a Peruvian horse is through a balance of virtue and defects. In my opinion, this analysis ends up being a subjective assessment that is based on a personal taste and ends up being not very technical.
  2. Many aficionados who want to withdraw from the hobby to consider that the efforts to unify criteria in the judgments have been unsuccessful .
  3. Given the diversity of current entertainment families (sports, travel, movies and other entertainment). Possible new fans in the Peruvian breed and in all breeds of horses in the world have no interest in getting involved in the hobby, so that all horse breeds are suffering the consequences of the modern world and we have less and less interest in this type of new learning seminars.

Finally, having seen in a personal way the pros and cons of this first exercise I invite you to consider ways to improve and support these types of events with new ideas to improve Competition of Virtues with the ultimate goal to get it done in other countries and gain more insight into the breed.