Sabino... and other piebald coats. There is enormous variety with horses's coats. Pure blood Arabs are traditonally grey, white, sometimes black or beige.
However, from time to time one discovers piebald Arab horses. . To get up to date with the nomenclature of the different breeds, I propse to give you a little of Wikipedia's description of horses's coats.:
Piebald: A coat of two colours seen as patches on the body.If one colour is dominant the coat is described as alezan-piebald, black-piebald, etc. If white predominates the coat is called piebald-alezan, piebald-black, etc. The skin under the white patches is pink.
- Piebald tobiano: this is the commonest piebald coat. The white crosses over the line of the backbone and does not normally reach the head. You often find four'balzanes haut chausées' and hair sprinkled with white.The boundaries between the white and the other colour is clear and well defined.
- Piebald Overo: The white does not cross the line of the backbone, but often reaches the head.. The "white stoking" are usually incomplete: they don't normally surround the limb. Hair is sprinkled with white. The boundaries between the patches and the whites is more irregular than with the Tobianos.
- Piebald Tovero: a mixture of the coats of the Overo and the Tobiano. The horse has a white head with marks on the ears, around the mouth and sometimes around the eyes. The marks are clearly defined and more or less extend to the flanks. The white crosses the back and the legs are usually the same.. The tail is joined to the hairline.
- Piebald Sabino: the white shows on the stomach and occasionally on the throat and the lower head. The edges of the white patches are irregular and make one think of lace.
- Piebald Rabicano: the forequarters are one solid colour, while the flanks, hind quarters and base of the tail white. The edge is indescriminate: it is made of a mixture of white and coloured hairs giving a ruddiness to the flanks.
- Balzan: This is the rareest of the piebald coats. The spread of the white patches is the same as for the Sabino but the edge of the white patches is more defined and very neat.
Tacheté: often wrongly referred to as "Appaloosa", in reference a breed sporting this type of coat.
- Leopard: white is the basic coat,covered in small patches of colour.
- Capé or blanket: the fore quarters are often of one solid colour, hind quarters white, sometimes covered with little round patches (spotted blanket), the edges of the patches are clear.
- Snowflake: small white flecks ressembling snowflakes all over the body.
- Marble or also Mazzblaljed, varnish roan: a piebald and roan coat. The coat is spotted with white hairs except for the bony areas like the head, shins, shoulders and haunches.
- Givré or Frost: The coat shows some white streaks on the kidneys or the haunches, with some more or less numerous white hairs along the line of the backbone.
Streaked coats are extremely rare with pure blood Arabs.
