is he varnishing?

[Defasher03]

http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/521069

Royal Oreno


please look at him, the picture is a bit older and his colour has changed a bit

[Jessi2]

in my opinion he looks totally chestnut with no varnish, just Chestnut.

[Xant’hippe]

Royal Oreno's sire Oreno, his dam, her dam, and her dam, all have sooty on the hindquarters. I think that's what Royal Oreno inherited, chestnut with sooty -- he's such a clear bright solid color otherwise, with no signs of spotting or dilutions anywhere.

Sire's great-granddam in the maternal line, ·α· Knight [TB] (still alive; 64 years old!).
http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/168530

α· Knight [TB] and her forebears were bred before the Leopard Complex was widely distributed. (LC started at 167### in Shetlands and Tarpans.) Knight's parents are/were Thoroughbreds, without outcrosses.

Dam, ·α· Temple [TB] retired at 20+, oldest Gallery picture is 1.92 years, sometimes sooty doesn't show that early. (Her dam looks sooty all over.):
http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/155566

Sire, -RR- Unearthly Child (TB), is still alive and only 10 years old. He doesn't look sooty, but some sooties don't show until even later in life. (His dam also looks sooty all over.):
http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/75331

So there must be a form of Sooty which confines itself to the hindquarters -- even if the Colour Guide doesn't show it or explain about it.

The Colour Guide has depictions of Sooty, but for full body (why some bay Forest Horses look black). It is a dominant gene, visible with one copy -- any maybe one copy tends to show chiefly on the hind.

One of my horses has late-onset full-body sooty, and he started showing the darkness at about age 12 from the tail, going more forward as he aged; he's now darkened all over. He's a 9####, so cannot have LC.

[Jessi2]

Maybe this is what happened to my Arab stallion. Take a look in his gallery pics from 2.5 years old to 6 years. I wish I had saved pics in between.
Rosyn became dark over his whole body.

At 11 yrs old he is even darker!

[Scythian]

About Rosyn: Another color effect, not really discussed in the Guides, is that bays and chestnuts can simply darken, very evenly, as they mature. "Sooty" tends to look more as if the horse had been powdered, with the greatest concentration of color on the topline.

This horse's Gallery shows some of that even darkening. He's a chestnut:

http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/129750

[Xant’hippe]

Previously:

Royal Oreno's sire Oreno, his dam, her dam, and her dam, all have sooty on the hindquarters. I think that's what Royal Oreno inherited, chestnut with sooty -- he's such a clear bright solid color otherwise, with no signs of spotting or dilutions anywhere.
______________________________________

To clarify a little further -- so I hope -- here's a stallion with varnishing. Look at his current image and his Gallery, and you'll see what I meant by "spotting" and "dilutions". Varnishing causes this uneven lightening in the body coat, mane, and tail. (Spots amid the blanket became darker with time, and some new ones appeared near the blanket.)

http://www.horseworldonline.net/horse/profile/359063 Little Rascal

[Defasher03]

Oh wow, thank you so much Xant'hippe, that's really helpful! I can't believe I didn't think of going back through his genealogical tree to see lol. Thank you for your time!