We have been having an unusually cold October here in Charlotte. I remember when I was a kid, horsemen telling me that horses coating up early meant a cold winter. I hope they are wrong! But I thought I would share a picture of Sprinkle's three-dimensional spots. They were more pronounced a few weeks ago when she first started getting her winter coat, but the rest of her coat has started to catch up. As best I can tell, the black hair on the spots just grows in faster than the surrounding white hair, because eventually the two areas even out. But for a few weeks in the fall, she looks like she's covered in black pom-poms.
I am also in denial about her color. I warned friends that, no, she probably wouldn't remain black (well, blackish) and white forever. I told them that appaloosas usually roan with age and that she was unlikely to be an exception. But I must admit that I think of her as having a black forehand, and she usually does help maintain my illusions by getting darker in the winter. As this current picture shows, though, the average person would not say that is a "black and white" horse. They would say "gray and white". Sigh.
But she has been gaining in maturity as a trade-off for the lost pigment, so I can't complain.
3 comments:
Hi Lesli! Dar had the same thing happen to his Bend Or spot on his hinder! It was the size of a softball looked like a poofy pom-pom every winter season. Stupid me always forgot to snap a pix -- in the Idaho cold, all I could think about was "It's so freakin' cold!" ~ Sarah
Interesting! I hadn't thought about the fact that Bend Or spots would do that, too. I'll need to check out Prince, the pale palomino with all the Bend Or spots I posted pictures of last year. I wonder if his are 3D, too? I need to get pictures of him anyway so I can compare him to last year. I think he is getting more of them, which I didn't know could happen.
That would be cool if Prince's Bend Or spot poofed up, too. Maybe it's a factor of how wooly a horse gets, too? Dar used to turn into a yak. He looked like a giant Thelwell. But no matter how fuzzy he got, his Bend Or spot was always the fuzziest. ~ Sarah
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