Breed Profile

Overo = Oreo Cookie

Use this equation to ace the coat pattern test!

by Cher Griffin

Pintos and Paints have a lot of different terms dealing with their colour and white marking patterns. They have coat colour patterns that are called tobiano and overo. Their coats consist of one or more dark colours combined with white. Tobiano and overo tell us where the white markings are. A fun way to remember which one is which, is also a tasty one!

Oreo cookies are a favourite of humans and horses, too. Oreo cookies are dark on the bottom, dark on the top and have a white, creamy centre. Paints and Pintos that have the overo colour pattern are dark on the topline, dark on the bottomline and have white patches in the middle. Just like Oreo’s! Both words begin with the letter and sound alike, so association is easy: an overo looks like an Oreo cookie.

The other pattern, tobiano, means the patches go up and over' the topline of the horse. One way to remember that is "tobiano goes over the top.”

The colour patterns are even by adding the terms "piebald" and "skewbald". the term piebald means black and white. Skewbald means any other colour (bay, palomino, chestnut, gray, etc) and white. Blackbird pie is the theme of a popular nursery rhyme. By saying this, you'll remember that piebalds are black and white!

So "old Paint" is not just a Paint, but he could be a piebald overo or a skewbald tobiano or a skewbald overo or...you get the picture. The combinations are endless!

For more information about Paints, contact: American Paint Horse Association P.O. Box 961023, Fort Worth, Texas 76161-0023

Horsepower April/May 1999