How to Identify an American Paint Horse

Identifying an American Paint Horse

• Step 1:
  To identify a true American paint horse, you have to do a bit of homework into its pedigree. You might think that an American paint horse is any horse that carries the tobiano or overo coat pattern--but this is not so. The American Paint Horse Association was formed in 1965 and was a large result of quarter horse breeders wanting to be able to register their "crop-out" quarter horses. "Crop-outs" were full-blooded (according to pedigree) quarter horses that had too much white to be accepted into the American Quarter Horse Association. At that time, too many white markings on a quarter horse could get it excluded, since these characteristics were considered undesirable.
• Step 2:
  American paint horses are, essentially, quarter horses with various painted coat patterns. Although some questionable pedigrees were grandfathered in, there are no gaited horses, no horses with any hint of other breeds such as saddlebred or walker. Each animal was assessed on the original ideal of the quarter horse stock.
• Step 3:
  An American paint horse will display all the physical characteristics of a quarter horse, from its body type to its disposition. Although some quarter horses will display more of the Thoroughbred aspects in the appendix version of the breed, this is not nearly as common in the American paint horse. Most of the American paint horses you will see will be heavily muscled and large-boned, with enormous rear ends and tractable dispositions. Occasionally. you will see a more Thoroughbred type that has been bred this way for jumping or other English divisions.
• Step 4:
  Of course, the most obvious way to identify an American paint horse is by its color. The color can be "loud" (very obvious splashes of color all over the body), or it can be as small as large markings that cover a certain area of the face. A horse can also be considered a "paint" if it has a belly spot over three inches. So appearances can be deceiving. Most American paint horse breeders strive to breed the "loud" colors, as these are what the breed is known for.
• Step 5:
  There is another type of American paint horse that is much more difficult to identify. This is the "breeding stock" paint horse. Genetics is a tricky business, and even when you breed two paints together, you do not always get a painted offspring. Offspring that are the result of two registered paint horses but do not have the qualifying white markings can be registered as "breeding stock" because they do carry the genes for the paint coat color---they just were not lucky enough to have it expressed in their own coat pattern.