European Pintabian Association

rc

The Pintabian – A History

As all Arabian enthusiasts already know, the Arabian horse does not normally have a spotted or parti-coloured coat, with the notable exception of the striking Sabino gene found in a number of Arabian horses.

In fact, the majority of Arabian horse breeders have, over the years, avoided breeding horses with an "excessive" amount of white.

In more recent years, a number of breeders have imagined the effect of a coat pattern with two or more colours, on the established beauty of the Arabian horse, and have set about trying to achieve this dream. Starting with one purebred and one Pinto (or Coloured horse, as they are called here in Great Britain), it then takes seven generations of breeding back to the pure Arab to produce a horse that can be described as a Pintabian. With no guarantee of producing colour every time, it can be appreciated why the Pintabian is such a precious horse. Fortunately, the time has now come when there are sufficient registered Pintabians to be able to breed them with each other, thus producing the occasional Homozygous Tobiano.

The majority of the work in this area has been carried out in the United States of America, which is why many of the Pintos and Pintabians in Europe can be traced back to the USA.

In 1992, the Pintabian Horse Registry was formed in the USA for horses of 99% (or over) Arabian blood with the Tobiano coat pattern only. (http://www.pintabianregistry.com/history.cfm)

This was followed in 1994 by the formation of the International Pinto Arabian Registry that registers lower peentages as well as other coat patterns in addition to the Tobiano, and has a separate section for Pintabians. (http://pintoarabianregistry.com/index.html)