Color Trivia
by Leslie Kathman

Lately I've been seeing a lot of sire and dam lists that have horses that are impossible (or at least highly unlikely!) colors for the breed that they have been assigned. Perhaps some of the blame can be laid with Breyer and all the wild new colors they have done in recent years, but nonetheless pedigree assigners should be aware that some colors just don't happen in some breeds. Even when a registry will grant papers regardless of the foal's color, that doesn't necessarily mean that "any" color can occur! In some cases, a given modifier just doesn't exist within the breed's gene pool.

Perhaps the most common error I see, in regards to unrealistic colors, is that of dun Walking Horses. Although this breed has been well know for its wide array of colors, the lineback dun shades don't appear to be among them! I have personally searched the databases and the old stud books and have not been able to turn up a single individual that carried the dun factor. I have come to believe that the color never has been a part of the breed, and suspect that it has never been a part of any of the Southern Gaited breeds. While the palominos have always had their fans, buckskins were never favored - a bias that was probably rooted in a belief that this was a "cow pony" color. It stands to reason that the dun colors, had they once existed in the Southern region, would find equal disfavor for the same reason.

The closest thing to dun found in the gaited horses are the darker variants of champagne; amber (bay) champagne and classic (black) champagne. Although not related to dun at all, their dusty coloring and brown points would lead most old time horsemen to call them dun. The one American Saddlebred registered as "dun" (the mare Jonquil, foaled in the 1920s) was actually an amber champagne, judging from her pictures.

Another rule-of-thumb is that the frame overo pattern only exists in a few New World breeds. This overo pattern is characterized by dark legs (occasionally there will be small socks on one or more legs) and white on the face, neck and body, and is considered quite rare even in the American Paint. The current thinking is that the pattern was the result of a mutation that occured in the New World, so models with the pattern should not be used to depict any European (or other Old World) breeds. Later research may prove this theory wrong (silver dapple was once thought to be a New World mutation - and is now known to be one of the oldest colors found in domestic horses), but for now there isn't any evidence.

I hope this information helps someone from making a long, fruitless search! While I love rare colors, and certainly advocate bringing back "extinct" colors, I would hate for someone to spend their research time looking for something that never did exist.

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