Horse of the Week

If you are interested in famous horses from the show jumping, dressage, eventing or horse racing world you might like a great new blog called Horse of the Week which features posts about favourite horses from thoses disciplines. The horse in the above picture with one white stocking is Eclipse the famous racehorse who was recently featured on Horse of the Week.

White Stockings - horse leg markings

A horse or pony has stockings when the white marking reaches at least to the knee or hock, usually over as shown in the above photograph.

White Socks

A sock is a white marking that extends higher than the fetlock but not as high as the knee or hock, here we've used a painting by John Frederick Herring Jnr to illustrate white socks.

Spotted horses and ponies - Appaloosa

A spotted horse or pony is called an Appaloosa and they don't have to have spots all over like the pony in the above picture. Appaloosa's have a mottled skin and are a recognised breed in the USA.

A Brown Horse or Pony

A brown horse or pony has a mixture of black and brown pigmented hairs in it's coat with a black mane and tail.

Hands High

If you ask how tall a pony is the answer will be given to you in hands, eg. 14 hands high (usually written as14hh). But what does that mean?


Well thousands of years ago the hand was a simple measurement where people actually used the width of their own hand to measure things. Of course eventually a set measurement had to be decided for a hand and this was 4 inches or 10 centimetres.


So a hand is 4 inches or 10 cms.


Now where is a horse or pony measured from?


We measure the height of a horse from his withers. So a 10hh pony is 40 inches or 100 cms tall at the withers.


Now not all horses or ponies are going to measure exactly a certain number of hands, most of them are going to be a bit over eg. 13.2hh. What does the .2 mean? Well that is 2 inches or 5 cms. So a 13.2hh pony measure 13 full hands + an extra 2 inches.

Black Horses

A truly black horse or pony must have only black hairs, no dark brown.

Liver Chesnut

Chestnut horses and ponies don't just come in the ginger colour there is also a liver chestnut which is more brownish in appearance. In the above photograph of a showing class the pony on the left with the white blaze is a liver chestnut.

A Chestnut horse or pony

A chesnut horse or pony is a ginger colour with a mane and tail the same sort of ginger / reddish colour although these can be a  slightly lighter or darker shade than the coat. 

Piebald

A piebald horse or pony has large irregular patches of black and white.

Skewbald

A skewbald horse or pony has large irregular patches of white with any other colour except black.

White or Grey Horse?

It is not correct to describe a white horse as white, it is a light grey unless it is a Lippizaner in which case it is correctly described as white.

So the horse in the first picture is a light grey and the horse in the picture from the Spanish Riding School of Vienna is white.

Steel or Iron Grey

A grey coat contains a mix of black and white hairs, a steel or iron grey horse or pony has more black hairs than white and the black hairs are spread evenly through the coat.

Dapple Grey

 Grey horses or ponies have a mixture of black and white hairs in their coats, a dapple grey has light patches of hair in circles on a darker background.

Both of these ponies are dapple grey but as you can see the one in the first picture has more black hairs than the one in the second.