LesliKathman
Member
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2012
- Messages
- 6
- Reaction score
- 0
You aren't the only one who questioned the blue eye situation in regards to sabino.
What I and others who have studied the pattern have believed is that there is one kind of splash that is pretty easy to define. This is the pattern that was originally described by Klemola in the 1930s, and then later by Lehmann in the 1950s. Some early researchers referred to it as "Recessive Spotting" because it popped up rather erratically compared to "Dominant Spotting" (ie., tobiano). For my purposes, I tended to throw everything else into the category of "sabino" just because sabino seems to serve as the catch-all for pinto patterns not currently defined, but really what those other things were called wasn't important. What seemed important is that there was a very specific pattern that was different from everything else.
That pattern is what I came to call Classic Splash. That's what some call "obvious splash" - horses with all four legs and a good bit of the body white, white on the tail, and an all-white face (or nearly so) with two blue eyes. I have spent more than two decades now collecting information on any horse like this I could find. I came to believe that the pattern was incompletely dominant, because every one that I could trace color lines one had potential color on both sides of the pedigree. (Of course, not all could be traced at all!)
Of course, blue eyes have always been associated with the pattern, so any time I found those I was immediately looking for some sign that a classic pattern had been produced. There were breeds where their connections to related breeds made me just SURE it was there somewhere, but I found that many times I was coming up with dead ends. Blue eyes, even consistently producing blue eyes, but never one of those obvious patterns. That is why I suspected that whatever was going on with my "Classic Splash" horses, there were other things out there giving me false leads. Too many things that looked like minimal or moderate splash patterns just weren't producing what they should, even in breeds where color wasn't a problem (so hiding the louder animals wasn't likely to be an issue), if those blue eyes were all part of the same thing.
In my own notes, I use the term Classic Splash for those horses that produce like the old Klemola model. That is, pretty minimal with heterozygous, and "obvious" when homozygous. (That's the theory, at least!) When I read the really sketchy details from UC Davis, I have to admit my hopes were raised that SW1 might be the pattern I have been watching - Classic Splash. The fact that it can be homozygous, but the others cannot, made me hopeful. And the breeds they have listed line up with what is in my records.
What has had me dying with curiosity is the other two (SW2 and SW3). In my own notes, I have noted that my disappointing cases - those horses that had blue eyes and some kind of splash-like traits - tend to fall into two categories. One I called (in a total lack of creativity) "False Splash, Bottom" and "False Splash, Top". That's because the one sort of looks like an obvious splash but the head has more dark areas than a (theorized) homozygous splash, and often both eyes are not blue. Sometimes neither eye is blue. The other kind has the really white face, and the white legs, but the body isn't marked up like a typical obvious splash. These often do have blue eyes, but again they don't seem to reproduce that very specific homozygous style pattern. I have no idea what they are. All I know is that in my search for that specific type of pattern, they don't always pan out. That's why I have long thought they were something different. It seems to me that at this point at least, there wasn't really much difference in calling them Splash or Sabino. The important part was that they were not the same as that original kind of Splash pattern.
I suspect that even with two other "splashes", I won't get lucky enough to have those two other patterns end up matching with the "False Splashes". Testing never seems to answer questions that neatly! And it may be that whether we call those horses splash or sabino may just be a matter of semantics. I hope for clarity sake that there is something different between the designations, much like there is a practical difference between Dominant White (appears out of nowhere, is often lethal in the homozygous form) and the known sabino patterns (not lethal, not a new mutation). But I suspect that there is still just so much out there that is a puzzle, both about blue eyes and also about white markings in general.
Anyway, that's what my thoughts have been. I apologize for barging in on the list here as a newcomer! I have read this board on and off as a lurker for a while, but when my friend Lewella said the topic was being discussed here, and so many were testing it was too exciting not to chat, too. Thank you everyone for sharing both the pictures and the testing results, which have been so fascinating. I know there are more horses in the pipeline, including some that are thought to be homozygous SW1, so the next few weeks should be interesting!
What I and others who have studied the pattern have believed is that there is one kind of splash that is pretty easy to define. This is the pattern that was originally described by Klemola in the 1930s, and then later by Lehmann in the 1950s. Some early researchers referred to it as "Recessive Spotting" because it popped up rather erratically compared to "Dominant Spotting" (ie., tobiano). For my purposes, I tended to throw everything else into the category of "sabino" just because sabino seems to serve as the catch-all for pinto patterns not currently defined, but really what those other things were called wasn't important. What seemed important is that there was a very specific pattern that was different from everything else.
That pattern is what I came to call Classic Splash. That's what some call "obvious splash" - horses with all four legs and a good bit of the body white, white on the tail, and an all-white face (or nearly so) with two blue eyes. I have spent more than two decades now collecting information on any horse like this I could find. I came to believe that the pattern was incompletely dominant, because every one that I could trace color lines one had potential color on both sides of the pedigree. (Of course, not all could be traced at all!)
Of course, blue eyes have always been associated with the pattern, so any time I found those I was immediately looking for some sign that a classic pattern had been produced. There were breeds where their connections to related breeds made me just SURE it was there somewhere, but I found that many times I was coming up with dead ends. Blue eyes, even consistently producing blue eyes, but never one of those obvious patterns. That is why I suspected that whatever was going on with my "Classic Splash" horses, there were other things out there giving me false leads. Too many things that looked like minimal or moderate splash patterns just weren't producing what they should, even in breeds where color wasn't a problem (so hiding the louder animals wasn't likely to be an issue), if those blue eyes were all part of the same thing.
In my own notes, I use the term Classic Splash for those horses that produce like the old Klemola model. That is, pretty minimal with heterozygous, and "obvious" when homozygous. (That's the theory, at least!) When I read the really sketchy details from UC Davis, I have to admit my hopes were raised that SW1 might be the pattern I have been watching - Classic Splash. The fact that it can be homozygous, but the others cannot, made me hopeful. And the breeds they have listed line up with what is in my records.
What has had me dying with curiosity is the other two (SW2 and SW3). In my own notes, I have noted that my disappointing cases - those horses that had blue eyes and some kind of splash-like traits - tend to fall into two categories. One I called (in a total lack of creativity) "False Splash, Bottom" and "False Splash, Top". That's because the one sort of looks like an obvious splash but the head has more dark areas than a (theorized) homozygous splash, and often both eyes are not blue. Sometimes neither eye is blue. The other kind has the really white face, and the white legs, but the body isn't marked up like a typical obvious splash. These often do have blue eyes, but again they don't seem to reproduce that very specific homozygous style pattern. I have no idea what they are. All I know is that in my search for that specific type of pattern, they don't always pan out. That's why I have long thought they were something different. It seems to me that at this point at least, there wasn't really much difference in calling them Splash or Sabino. The important part was that they were not the same as that original kind of Splash pattern.
I suspect that even with two other "splashes", I won't get lucky enough to have those two other patterns end up matching with the "False Splashes". Testing never seems to answer questions that neatly! And it may be that whether we call those horses splash or sabino may just be a matter of semantics. I hope for clarity sake that there is something different between the designations, much like there is a practical difference between Dominant White (appears out of nowhere, is often lethal in the homozygous form) and the known sabino patterns (not lethal, not a new mutation). But I suspect that there is still just so much out there that is a puzzle, both about blue eyes and also about white markings in general.
Anyway, that's what my thoughts have been. I apologize for barging in on the list here as a newcomer! I have read this board on and off as a lurker for a while, but when my friend Lewella said the topic was being discussed here, and so many were testing it was too exciting not to chat, too. Thank you everyone for sharing both the pictures and the testing results, which have been so fascinating. I know there are more horses in the pipeline, including some that are thought to be homozygous SW1, so the next few weeks should be interesting!
Last edited by a moderator:
