Recently there have been a couple of interesting discussions around declaring color when photo showing models. In one case a judge claimed that a shower couldn’t declare a color on an OF plastic model other than what Breyer had declared; in another the judge insisted that a Fjord color designation had to use the Fjord registry specific terms (and curiously, the English translation of those terms, not the original Norwegian).
So here are my questions for discussion:
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Should we require color next to breed and gender at all? And if so, how specific should that color be? (IE: “chestnut” or “flaxen chestnut sabino rabicano”?)
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Does it matter to you if a shower chooses a different label for a model’s color than the manufacturer or original artist did?
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Does it matter to you if the color matches the label that the registry would apply/require? (Chestnut vs sorrel, grulla vs grey dun or grå)
I do not mind listing a color, as certain colors can look similar (some sooty chestnuts and silver bays, for instance), so therefore you’re stating what you feel your horse’s color is and potentially justifying a breed designation. Along that line, I also don’t think it matters if you label a horse’s color differently than the manufacturer or even artist had. OF paint jobs do not always look like the color intended/prototype. Also reference pictures get mislabeled so people make incorrect assumptions of colors when they paint them - or science figures out what actually causes a neat color. And there’s definitely going to be a lot more of that as science studies horse colors, if not in actual color, then in patterns. “Hey, turns out that this flashy white marking is actually <fill in the blank new white pattern> instead of just ‘high whites’.”
I think that if we’re going to be labeling colors, we should use the most accurate terminology possible (I say this as I call lighter chestnut stock horses as sorrels, sorry, can’t take the stock horse girl out of me, lol). Therefore, a dun on black should be referred to as either black dun or grulla, rather than grå or grey dun, or some other less-commonly used terminology. And we definitely shouldn’t penalize someone for using the Norwegian grå (grey) instead of the American/English translation of grey dun when referring to a Norwegian Fjord. In this particular show series, I did get penalized for listing Fjords as “bay dun” and “grulla” instead of “brunblakk” [broken brown] and “grå” earlier, and then most recently people got penalized for not using the American terms of “brown dun” and “grey dun.” I guess I don’t mind a judge pointing out that a color is listed as X instead of Y in a certain breed, but I don’t feel that is disqualification-worthy. At most, maybe a reason to decide between two equal horses. Also, if we’re going to go this route, if I list my model horse as “frame overo” or “splash white” instead of the catch-all of “overo” that is usually used by registries to designate not-tobiano, should my model be disqualified in a show?
There’s generally a lot of reasons to not place a model horse, even in very large an competitive shows - angles, lighting, glare, background, overall photo quality. We shouldn’t have to use things like the color terminology or even the “common” (or not-so-common) model name of an entry to disqualify half the horses - just don’t place them if you don’t like them!
Entangled in all of this, as you allude to, is the fact that some designations chosen by registries are … not quite right or confusing. Grey dun to me would mean a horse with the grey-to-white gene on top of some flavor of dun, not dun on black that looks blue or brown grey. ‘Roan’ gets used for extensive sabino like white spotting or sometimes even grey. In Connemaras, especially in the UK and Ireland, the term “dun” is frequently used for a color that is genetically what I would refer to as sooty buckskin - cream on bay with a sooty factor.