pinto coat patterns
Tobiano: (pronounced toe-bee-ah-no) is basically a white horse with patches of color.
It generally has white legs and white crossing the backbone. The head, chest, flank, buttock and often the tail are the usual coloured areas. A variation of Tobiano is the predominately dark horse with white socks and white markings on the neck and or shoulder and or buttock. Tobiano is a dominant gene requiring a Tobiano parent to produce a Tobiano. Different coloured eye, e.g. : one brown and one blue eye are commonly found but this is not always present, no discrimination is made against the colour of the eyes.
The ideal Pinto possesses a 50 – 50 distribution of colour and white markings
Overo: (pronounced O-vair-ro) is a dark coloured horse with white markings. The white markings are of irregular shape with jagged edges and originate along the side of the horse often spreading towards the neck, legs and back.
Colour appears to frame the white areas. Bald or white (apron) face, blue or glass eyes, one to four legs may be solid or long white stockings, white may not cross the back or neckline.
Sabino Overo: Appears speckled or "roany", mostly near the spot's edges. This is the most common overo pattern. Sabinos often have spotted or roan-like facial markings, which can look quite wild. It is rare to find a sabino with a normal star or stripe for a facial marking. Another distinct characteristic of the sabino, is that they generally have three or four white legs
Frame Overo: White spots along the horse's barrel, with a "frame" of darker colour around the white. Over 95% of all frame overos are solid coloured along the back from the withers to the tail, and it is uncommon for the mane to be of mixed colour.
Tobero/ Tovero: Horses which show definite characteristics of the two patterns as described above in Tobiano and Overo are referred to as Tobero (pronounced toe-bear-oh) or Tovero (pronounced: tow vair’ oh) Their coat can consist of completely different coat patterns on different parts of their body, Tobiano pattern in one place and jagged Overo edges in another.
Splash White: These are normally solid on top, but look like they have been rolled over onto their back and splashed with paint. Markings tend to be rounded. Normally extreme white on face and black eyeliner. For a long time, horses with minimal Splash coloring were not classified as carrying Splash. It is thought that what was previously considered a normal frame overo with eyeliner, may in fact be Frame Overo, plus Splashed White, which would make it much more common in the horse community then previously thought. There is some stigma attached to horses that appear with the "classic" Splashed White markings due to the belief that they may be deaf. Some may be, however the majority are not. These days, there is much more research being done on this gene and it is now the belief that the blue eye in non Frame Overo horses, is an indication of Splash, and not sabino. The Overo gene can sometimes be "hidden" and be hard to identify. If in doubt, it is best to have your horse DNA tested to confirm or deny before breeding with another Frame Overo horse
