Paints

One of my favourite breeds of horses is the paint as I've mentioned before. Much to my delight I've found a farm where they are bred, and often in the spring or early summer you can see many young foals gamboling along beside mum.

These paints are brown and white and black and white. The little foal seen here is much darker than his dam, leading me to believe that dad was a black and white fellow. Whichever, they always attract a lot of attention as they are very showy horses.

From Wikipedia: The American Paint Horse is a breed of horse that combines both the conformational characteristics of a western stock horse with a pinto spotting pattern of white and dark coat colors. Developed from a base of spotted horses with Quarter Horse and Thoroughbred bloodlines, the American Paint Horse Association (APHA) breed registry is now one of the fastest-growing inNorth America. The registry allows some non-spotted animals to be registered as "breeding stock Paints," and considers the American Paint Horse to be a horse breed with distinct characteristics, not merely a color breed.

This is Mr. B - he was one of my favourite horses and a paint. When he first came, he didn't like being confined and learned that there was a break in the tape of the electric fence. I would regularly find him outside of the fence and thought, since he came from an equestrian centre where he taught youngsters how to ride, that he'd jumped the tape that was only about two and a half feet above the ground.


However one day I happened to be in the paddock and watched him walk over to his favourite spot, put his head down and walk under the tape, sliding it down his back. So I fixed it - replaced the tape with an unbroken string.


I felt dreadful the next day when I found him standing in the pasture with a downed fence around him. Unmoving. I turned off the fence, brought him into the corral and repaired the damage, making sure I gave him a nice handful of horse treats. While that incident must have scared him a lot, it saved his life.


I lived next to a rail way track and Mr. B was forever looking for new places to graze - away from the others (there were five horses at that time). I put up a long strand of baler's twine to prevent access down the hill to the train tracks. Mr. B never went over there unless the baler's twine had broken or blown down - which it did one day, and I caught him just in time as he was blithely heading over to the greener grass on the other side of the downed twine. It was not electrified, but sight of the line that it represented must have been enough to keep him away. He was a smart old boy.