Thrown in with overo until fairly recent times. It is now
recognised as a separate gene. It is easily the most unrecognised
of the pinto patterns.
This can be a fascinating colour with the horses looking
like they either dipped their head in a bucket of white paint or stood in a
big white dam! Another way of thinking about it is the dark colour poured
on from above. Unless it reaches extreme forms though is very rarely identified.
It cant be tested for which also makes it harder to identify.
Many, many gypsy horses probably have splash but it is
very rarely noticeable because of all the Tobiano and sabino
characteristics. On its own it has very straight clear edges to the
white areas and horses usually have some white on the legs. It probably
causes most of the blue eyes in Gypsy horses too.
Sabino in conjunction with Splash tends to put black eye
liner around an otherwise white face. Although it is thought that two
splash genes probably counteracts this effect and you end up with a full
white face, blue eyes and no black eyeliner. Splash in conjunction with
Tobiano can sometimes decease the amount of white on the chest and make the
leg white run up the leg into the chest or flank. The lines will be cleaner
and straighter than if it was sabino doing it. Splash and Tobiano can put a
black outline around the mouth too if the nose is otherwise white. White on
the tip of the tail can be splash, tobiano usually
is dark at the end.
Blue eyes can appear even when there is very little face
white, it is just what splash does sometimes.
Just a little snip on the nose can be the splash gene.
In all the pictures below the horses also have tobiano and
sabino but their splash characteristics are still visible. These pictures
also are showing the splash effect on the head area. Basically because
of all the tobiano white it is very hard to pick splash from
the backend! But on a horse without tobiano or sabino their effects
certainly aren’t limited to the face.
These are also all black bases horses simply, well,
because there are more black based Cobs! Splash like every other pattern gene
can happen to any colour.
The bottom of horses on this page include
two
very
well known splashed white Paint horses from plus a few others. Just to
give you an idea of what splashed white will do without tobiano or sabino around.
This page is a bit more extensive that some of the others but not
that many people know much about Splashed White and with it so prevalent in the
Gypsy Horses it is worth reading and seeing more examples.
