Endangered
The ORIGINAL Mountain Horse!
The Mountain Pleasure Horse is the oldest gaited breed in North America. The MPH has been proven to be the parent breed of all North American gaited breeds including; Rocky Mountain, Tennessee Walking Horse, American Saddlebred and Kentucky Mountain Horses. We are a non-profit organization registered in the state of Kentucky and dedicated to the promotion, breeding and development of the Mountain Pleasure Horse. Our goal is first to preserve the bloodlines of the Mountain Pleasure Horse, then to build their population. We issue registration papers not to sell these horses, but to certify they meet the stringent criteria of the Mountain Pleasure Horse Association (MPHA) and to encourage the breeding of the rare and endangered Mountain Pleasure Horse.
Mountain Pleasure Horse/Appalachian Purebred Gaited Horse - Kentucky, USA
EST Status: CRITICAL
Originally just called "mountain horse" or "saddlers" This 200 year old gaited breed was developed in the remote eastern Kentucky's Appalachian Mountains around the time of Kentucky's early statehood. Settlers and farmers used their horses for working the small hillside farms, riding the steep mountain trails to hunt for food, to travel to neighbors and the nearest town for supplies, and still expected their horses to pull the family buggy or wagon to church on Sundays. Recent Mountain Pleasure Horse DNA studies have placed the breed as an ancestral contributor to a host of other breeds: the American Saddlebred, Tennessee Walking Horse, and its close cousin the Rocky Mountain Horse. Naturally gaited, the breed is born with a four-beat lateral gait with no exaggerated movement, allowing horse and rider a surefooted, ground covering gait useful in on the steep trails of its homeland. This gait is often referred to as the "Cadillac of Rides". Today's Mountain Pleasure breeders pride themselves on maintaining a great family horse used for pleasure second to none on the trail. The signature color of the Mountain Pleasure is palomino, followed by newly popularized double cream expressions of perlino and cremello, with few blacks and occasional bays, buckskin, or chestnut, the latter three so few now that some breeders have taken a special interest in concentrating on those colors again before they are lost. Current global populations of the Mountain Pleasure Horse hover around 2500, with approximately 1700 of those in the state of Kentucky.