American Saddlebreds

In an effort to get something done, I decided to bring up my trusty Excel spreadsheet, start at the top, and work my way down until I found a horse that wasn't pedigreed. Needless to say, I didn't make it very far.

(The first row of x's to the far right is pedigreed. The second is for the personal pages I was trying to create for each horse)

I came to #32, Marionette. Originally, this was the black tobiano Breyer ASB Stablemate, but I ended up changing to a chestnut colored GC Micro Mini because a BSO came into my possession that the previous owner had assigned to the exact body, and I couldn't help keeping it the same.

The new Marionette

I began my search as usual- I typed something along the lines of World Champion American Saddlebred into my Yahoo search bar and browsed through the breeder listings proclaiming their horses as either World Champions themselves, or related. Eventually, I became so sick of seeing Will Shriver, Supreme Sultan, Wing Commander, Anacacho Shamrock, and Bourbon Genius King, that I started to look for horses without any of these in their lines. Finally, I found Telemark, and thought- Perfect! Not all of my horses need to be related to winners; I need some outcrosses to lesser known horses for balance, too.

But what to do for a mare? I moved on to look at the other ASBs that needed sires and/or dams, as my searching was turning up other interesting horses. I came across The Mistress of Motion, a mare lacking the overflow of popular horses listed above, with a wonderful champagne color. Ooh! Can I get some of that in my stable? But where? Ah....what exactly is the color of that foal?

Spring Valleys Mistress

She could pass as an amber champagne-- a GC version of one, anyway. What a weird hair color, and her leg shading. And her hooves aren't exactly black, either. Well, I assigned her that mare as a dam, and went on the hunt for a bay sire, since amber champagnes have a bay base color. I did find one- Spring Valleys Deliverance, but too late I realized he appears in a few of my other horses' pedigrees. I guess that's not a bad thing- less so than having too many Wing Commanders, anyway.

And then I thought- why not make her the dam to my motherless Marionette? They're supposed to be mother-daughter anyway, if you follow GC's packaging thinking. I could just switch them around. Marionette is very probably just a basic chestnut, but while I was looking up champagnes, there were a few called self-colored champagnes, or dark gold champagnes. Meaning that their mane/tail were approximately the same color as their body, instead of being lighter. That will work! And so I had two champagne-carriers in my herd.

Ah, I'm almost done! Or so I thought. Spring Valleys Mistress' photo was still in my To Identify folder of pictures (Yes, I know, not a very clever name, but its to the point!) All my orphans reside in there. It is sort of a black hole, as it somehow creates more than I originally put in. Does that mean I'm on the "wrong" side of the hole?! I digress. I found them-

Bah! Forgot about them. If you look closely, you'll see Saddlebred down in the corner, in some languages other than English. This is one of my more precious imports from Germany or the UK. The mare is pretty easy- a basic black (although I noticed there are slim picking of black ASBs in comparison with the chestnuts!). But what the heck is going on with that stallion? At first guess I went with sabino. But a sabino American Saddlebred Yahoo search turned up something more interesting- Center Ring. http://www.allbreedpedigree.com/center+ring

What an interesting -and familiar- facial marking! Now, Center Ring has a lot more leg white, but as a minimal splash overo, who's to say that crossing on a solid mare wouldn't cut down on the amount of leg white? Now I just needed a pretty black mare. Masquerade SLS fit just fine.

Success! Not only did I get two champagnes ASBs into my stable, but I somehow bred a splash overo as well!