GHOST HORSES
These are the Tiger Horse Ghosts. Use this information to help identify your homozygous applicants. Face, leg and hoof markings are important in all types but the Ghosts share unique and similar coat patterns. No two horses are alike. Spots sometimes change. Whorls do not. Find at least two whorls/cowlicks please. To Register your horse print off Registration Page 1 and Registration Page 2 Please also visit FEES for correct mailing address and other important details.
Ghost Horses are known to be homozygous which means they were born with two copies of the Lp gene, and will always give one copy to any of their foals. There are two types of Ghost Horse. These three below are “Leopard Ghosts” but they also inherit a copy of the roan gene. This type is known as a “Few Spot” in Appaloosa circles.
If a Few Spot Appaloosa can demonstrate gait ability, it may apply for Royalty Registration. Most Few Spots tend to perform a unique gait all their own and one that is hard to identify correctly. Somewhat of a sitting trot, it is quite fast but is a 4-beat gait rather than a 2-beat trot. We have identified their gait as the Gliding Gait. These Ghost Horses are unique and valuable assets to help keep leopard spots in our breed. We will consider non gaited horses with these markings for inclusion into our breed registry provided they are physically appealing. If you think you have one, please consider applying for registration. Tigre’s founding member Victoria Varley has discovered that gait tends to be gender related. ie, Sires give gait to daughters and Dams give gait to their sons. Further study is underway regarding the leopard Ghost horses individual way of going. Meantime you can learn here how horses inherit their gaits, whether gaited or not, the same fascinating tendency occurs.
This type of homozygous Tiger Horse is named a Roan Snowcap Ghost. Both types of Ghost Horse are born much as you see them on this page and change very little in appearance as they mature. The darker areas in both types always develop more roan, ie flecks of base coat and white hairs intermingled in a most attractive way. This type tends to inherit the gait of the opposite sex parent more obviously than the Leopard type does. Therefore the roan Snowcap Ghost is highly desirable as breeding stock for gait and color and especially when crossing to outsiders that do not gait, or gait and have no spots. Of course breeding parents that are both gaited offers added insurance that every foal, male or female, will also be gaited.
This horse is named Annandale’s Holy Smoke and to-date is the only registered Tiger Horse in the world with all of these necessary characteristics. Tigre hopes to find more. His parents are Annandale’s Heavenly and Annandale’s Gray Wolf. As his parents continue to breed, hopefully more top quality foals like this one will be produced. He has one full sister at the time of going to press October, 2012.
It took 20 years of focus to arrive at this kind of perfection. You are looking at a miracle and new world Soulon Tiger Horse producer. History in the making.
Ghost Horses are not the only homozygous individuals in the breed but the easiest to identify.