Pretty little ponies...

My favorite solid color of horse is definitely the bay.  I don't know why I favor them, but I do.  And I really like horses with smooth-looking, shiny coats.  The horse below is an almost perfect example of the shade of brown I like my bays to be.  I prefer the hair to have just a bit more reddish tint to it, though.

Solid colors aside, I'm a nut for Paints and flashy Appaloosas.  Again, I don't know why, I just do.  I'm not a big fan of lots of white on Paints, as I've mentioned before, and I don't like faces with a lot of white on it either, no matter the color of the horse.  It's just not my "thing".  And the more flashy the Paint is, the better.  On Facebook yesterday someone posted a photo of a really neat-looking horse, but you couldn't see very much of it

The description of this horse was "unique heterozygous tobiano mare with Belton patterning"  I have no idea what any of that means, other than it created a rather unusual-looking horse.  hahaha.  Well, I know heterozygous and tobiano, but I've never heard of "belton patterning".  Anyway, I had to find out more about this horse.  See more pictures.  So I clicked on the link and it took me to a website.  In French.  Now, I'm part French.  And I took French in high school and did quite well in it (other than not being able to roll my Rs).  But all that got me on this site was being able to tell the ages of the horses in the pictures and a few words here and there.  I did, however, find pictures of this girl, whose name is Vision Morinda, at various ages.

While I know, technically, she is considered a Paint, with all those spots I would consider her a Paintaloosa.  hahaha.  She's cute, though.  It's interesting to see how much the spots on her body have changed...going from small and tightly bunched to larger and more separated.  Equine genetics can be pretty interesting and confusing.  You can have a horse that is born one color and as it grows older it might turn into something completely different.  Arabians are a good example of that.  All purebred Arabians are born a solid color and if one of their parents carries the grey gene then there's a good chance the foal will become grey as well.  Oftentimes you can see it at a young age.  I was at Tom Chauncey Arabians one time and they brought a foal out with his mother and the foal had a ring of grey around each eye.  His mom was pure white.  The below photos aren't of that horse, nor are they even of the same horse.  I'm just using it as an example of the transformation they go through

 While that's not entirely the case with Vision, it's similar.  I understand human genetics more than animal, but either way, the results can be pretty awesome.