Monday, July 25, 2016

De Colores

The colors of the Odin continue to intrigue me.

Like what is that light brown spot on his neck? This is from about a month ago
Obviously, he is a dark bay.  Which makes sense given his sire:
Dynaformer

And his dam:
Irridescence

But his color doesn't seem to stay the same, and I am not just talking about sun fading.

From pretty uniformly dark in winter
To weird dapple-y patches on his butt and now random white roan type hairs showing up
White hairs have come in all over his rump
and his back

The butt dapples are hard to capture but you can see
them to the right of his tail here.









I expected the sun fading, and there has been some of that.  But he lives in a UV protected fly sheet so the sun doesn't entirely explain the changes.  The pictures below are a month after the top picture and he is basically a different color

Parts of him are sort of dun colored, a lot of him is what I can only describe
as brown, and then we have those bright patches
Having only owned chestnuts previously, they had their own weird color things, but this has been a new experience for me.  I thought maybe this was normal for all bays but I get lots of comments on his coloration at the barn from people with bays of various shades so I think he must be somewhat unique.

And here I thought I bought the boringest, plainest colored horse on earth.  

Don't call me boring lady
His name plate says "The Odinpotamus"
because he is a hungry, hungry hippo
So far, I am not sure which of his colors is my favorite but I am enjoying have the horse of many (bay) colors.  

In other news, his various attempts at self destruction have been healing well



The hoof crack on his right hind has started growing out and his knee looks great.

He has been excellent under saddle as well.  Our big takeaway lately has been if the human's shoulders stay back (spoiler alert  - they don't), the horse doesn't drag on the forehand as much.  In general, Odin took a huge leap forward in his canter and jumping work this week.  It will be interesting to see if he stays on that trajectory or plateaus or regresses a bit.

I won't know right away - I leave Wednesday for a week in Europe on a business trip - but I am excited to see where he is at when I get back.




5 comments:

  1. He actually looks seal brown (as do both parents) to me, especially given the obviously pangare nose in the winter photo. That's a tell tale sign of seal brown. Pretty typical for them to go through a range of browns throughout the year, too. Mine can look borderline blood bay in the summer and black in the winter.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am clearly not up on my colors, I had never heard of Seal Brown, but after some googling, I have to agree with your assessment! Thanks for the information

      Delete
  2. I agree with Amanda; looks like a seal bay. My husband has one. It's a very pretty coloring.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Ditto Amanda on the seal brown/bay. Houston is more of a dark bay I guess but still has a bunch of fluctuation throughout the year regardless of the sun. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. He is a seal brown, as are both of his parents. And the light mark on his neck, and that you see between his butt cheeks are likely a bit of sweat burn;)Sweat and sun burn are pretty common. They are most likely to happen where the reins hit the neck, where the saddle and girth are and around the flanks, and between the legs. This is also the hair most likely to be sensitive to pangare (gene)in the seal horses(except on the neck).

    ReplyDelete