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)
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.