Texans Only Hope
"Hope"
AQHA Palomino dun ("Dunalino") mare
by Golden Caantender, out of Flowers in Crystal
Half-sister (same sire, different non-dun dams) of OSO X.
Gayle writes: "Hope and her dunskin foals all have lighter bodies, darker
peachy color on their legs (above the black stockings on the dunskins) and
faces, dorsals, faint leg bars, faint shoulder bars and the dunskins have the
ear bars."
 Hope
Her genetic color combination is Red + Cream (we assume) + Dun (as we can
plainly see and prove.)
This combination is commonly known as "dunalino" or "palomino dun".
Her sire is, as mentioned above, Golden Caantender, and her dam is the 1988
AQHA dark sorrel mare Flowers in Crystal.
Gayle writes, "I spoke with the
previous owner of the dam. He had sold her, but told me she was a dark sorrel but
not a dun. Golden Caantender's dam was a dun according to the pedigree site."
Hope is an interesting case in several ways. I found her while trying
to track down the source of the dun gene in OSO X ("Blue"), a cremello QH
without any visible markings, who passed dun markings on to his foals.
I had been told there was no dun in his pedigree, therefore, they said, the
foals must have only had "temporary foal markings". However, his first two
colts (out of unmarked mares) kept those markings into maturity, one of them
even winning "best dun factor" in a horse show.
I had had personal experience with local Palomino owners whose horses had
distinctive dun markings denying they were there. There was good reason
for this: the PHBA would not register a horse with
brown or black markings as a palomino. And in a cruel twist, the two big
"buckskin" (dun) registries did not recognize that combination as dun, either!
I hope that as of this writing all three organizations have become more
knowledgeable about genetics.
In the meantime, there were/are a lot of palomino duns out there registered
and called plain "palomino".
So, I set out to show that OSO X's famous sire, Golden Caantender, was a dun,
so that he could be one himself.
Golden Caantender's pedigree allowed for it; his dam was a dun. All I
needed was to find a dun foal out of a dun-dun mare, to see if he had inherited
the gene from his dam.
I saw a reference to Hope in his progeny list. She was listed as
Palomino. Undaunted, I contacted her owner, Gayle Norman, who proved to
have as much an inquiring mind as I do, and went to look for dun markings on her
"palomino mare". They were there! ("Proof" pictures are all over
this web page.)
Their only possible source was Golden Caantender. Therefore, he could
also have given the dun gene to OSO X.
The other interest we have in Hope is that she shows dun markings that are
toward one end of the spectrum: the "slighter" end.
When a black-pointed horse is a dilute color with no vague "sootiness"
anywhere, has a crisp, black dorsal stripe and zebra-like legs, fishboning, neck
striping, ear barring, white tips on the black tops of the ears, etc. etc., most
people would recognize that it's a dun.
But this dun is on a red/palomino base, making the points and markings
lighter than black or (even dark red) to begin with. Then she has shading
along her dorsal stripe. Hoever, if you read the entire page and study the
pictures, you'll see that she is, indeed, dun; and has passed that on to two of
her foals by a black Arabian stallion (see below).
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Hope's dorsal stripe. Note the shading near it, and
how it nearly fades away in places; also see the photo with arrows added by
her owner showing her ("broken") shoulder and neck barring.
Note to
webmaster: I have giant copies of four of Hope's dun markings pics in my
attachments file under 5/9/07.
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Hope's forelegs. These photos are completely unretouched.
Note the typical dun markings.
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Hope's eye. Some list members are noticing that their palomino
duns have "orange" eyelashes. We're looking into this in relation to
normal palomino color lashes, to see if it's significant.
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