A professor of pathology and genetics at the Virginia-Maryland Regional School of Veterinary Medicine in Blacksburg, Va., has been working for more than 30 years to help save a rare breed of horses.

Colonial Spanish horses were the horse responsible for the Spanish conquest of the Americas, changed the culture of Native Americans, were used on cattle ranches measured in miles instead of acres, and moved cattle across half a continent to make cowboy history. Phil Sponenberg, DVM, PhD, became interested in the horses while a student at Texas A&M University. His first trip was to East Texas, but he soon learned about the Choctaw horses of southeast Oklahoma–descendants of the Colonial Spanish horses.

The Spanish influence extended up to the Carolinas and all across the Gulf Coast, as well as throughout the West. “The Choctaws were one of the tribes displaced from Mississippi, and they took their livestock with them,” Sponenberg says.

That began Sponenberg’s informal education on Colonial Spanish horses. He stayed connected with conservation efforts throughout his college career and after coming to Virginia Tech in 1981. He has collaborated with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy since 1978, and with Iberian researchers since the early 1990s