Introduction The American Paint Horse is a breed of horse which is a specific type of stock horse developed in the United States. Paint horses are characterized by a spotting pattern of white hair over unpigmented skin combined with some other base coat color.
Breed Colors Each Paint Horse has a particular combination of white and another color of the equine spectrum. Most common are horses with white spots combined with black, bay, dark bay (called brown by the APHA), chestnut or sorrel. Less common are horses with spots that are palomino, buckskin, gray, cremello, perlino, various shades of roan, or various shades of dun, including grullo.
Markings can be any shape or size, and located virtually anywhere on the Paint's body. Although Paints come in a variety of colors with different markings, there are only four defined coat patterns: overo, tobiano and tovero and solid.
Terms for color patterns defined
Tobiano: The most common spotting pattern, characterized by rounded markings with white legs and white across the back between the withers and the dock of the tail, usually arranged in a roughly vertical pattern and more white than dark, with the head usually dark and with markings like that of a normal horse. i.e. star, snip, strip, or blaze.
Overo: Spotting pattern characterized by sharp, irregular markings with a horizontal orientation, usually more white than dark, though the face is usually white, sometimes with blue eyes. The white rarely crosses the back, and the lower legs are normally dark.
Sabino: Often confused with roan, a slight spotting pattern characterized by high white on legs, belly spots, white markings on the face extending past the eyes and/or patches of roaning patterns standing alone or on the edges of white markings. In some registries, sabinos are registered as having the tobiano pattern
Tovero: spotting pattern that is a mix of tobiano and overo coloration, such as blue eyes on a dark head.
Solid: A horse otherwise eligible for registration as a Paint that does not have any white that constitutes a recognized spotting pattern.
"Color": An informal term meaning that the horse has a spotting pattern. (The opposite of "Solid.")
"Chrome": An informal term of approval used in some places to describe a particularly flashy-colored horse
History
The American Paint Horse shares a common ancestry with the American Quarter Horse and the Thoroughbred. A registered Paint horse should conform to the same "stock horse" body type desired in Quarter Horses: a muscular animal that is heavy but not too tall, with a low center of gravity for maneuverability, and powerful hindquarters suitable for rapid acceleration and sprinting.
When the American Quarter Horse Association emerged in 1940 to preserve horses of the "stock" type, it excluded those with pinto coat patterns and "crop out" horses, those born with white body spots or white above the knees and hocks. Undeterred, fans of colorful stock horses formed a variety of organizations to preserve and promote Paint horses. In 1965 some of these groups merged to form the American Paint Horse Association
