Vehicle horses

[Rainyday]

An example of dilutes hiding...it was thought for a long time that the Canadian Horse breed had lost the dilutes the breed appeared to have had from historical records...until a palomino stallion was born. The breed's dominant colour is black and, looking at his pedigree, it's fairly obvious in hindsight that he came from a long line of smokey blacks and the occasional buckskin that was registered as bay, and no one picked up on what was going on with the line until a pale palomino popped out.

Now, to be absolutely fair, this is a quite a rare breed with very small scale breeding (and it was helped by the fact chestnuts, the only base colour on which creme dilute tends to be pretty obvious, are quite uncommon in the breed), so that brings us back to the 'why aren't there more cream crop-out TBs?' question, but it shows it can happen.

A few years ago, on a trip to England, I saw a 18th century painting of a racehorse that was clearly palomino. I tried to find out what I could about the painting but all I could come up with it was pre-Weatherby's in date, so the horse in question was not technically a TB, and may not have even been TB foundation stock, but there were certainly palominos racing at some point. This was in a stately home not far from Newmarket.

[Mylute]

I have always heard, and even read, that it was fairly commonplace for foals born with a lot of white ("a lot of white" sometimes meaning just three socks) to be destroyed or "made to disappear" in some way. They thought a lot of white meant the foal had bad genetics, or the legs with white had weaker bones. They would be killed, which would open the mare up to be a foster mare, and they would report that the foal was a "bay stillborn" because if word got out that mare produced a dreaded flashy foal, people might not buy her. California Chrome, Talismanic, Freud, etc would not have seen the racetrack. Even Tiznow would have been iffy. Even worse, it could make the stallion look bad. If the foals weren't killed they were definitely not sold or used for racing.

Because of this, it isn't crazy to assume if a foal was born a palomino, buckskin, etc. they would also be done away with. As time went on, people figured out the "white = bad" belief wasn't true, and more and more flashy thoroughbreds were born and raced. With them, came the palominos, paints, and so on. Inbreeding between horses with a lot of white or sources of white increases the frequency.

[Gemini]

In what way are their backgrounds questionable? There have been several discussions on this board regarding the potential origins of the color genes in the thoroughbred on this forum, which all pretty much came to the conclusion that odd colors are not as inconceivable as previously thought.

Also, I'm fairly certain all registered horses get blood tests for parentage.

Blood and DNA tests only prove the ancestors are who they are claimed to be. If a previous ancestor was already admitted as a TB, then no one is the wiser unless they test specifically for non-TB genetics.

At any rate, I know that the understanding of colors/patterns has come a long way recently. Obviously the gray, white, and otherwise "flashy" horses have shown they can compete just as well as their plainer counterparts. But I have yet to see a palomino racehorse have a modicum of success. There can be a lot of factors behind that considering the relatively obscure bloodline and the fact that most of the breeders producing them aim for jumping and showing instead. But I wanted to pose the theoretical question because I was curious.