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another "guess the breed" thread...

6K views 39 replies 19 participants last post by  Sweeney Road 
#1 ·
Since Fabio has been feeling better, I've started hearing all kinds of "crazy" guesses for his breed.

He was sold to me as an Arab cross, sold to his previous owner as a Arab X QH cross, and was listed at the killpen as a "suspected Arab cross."
I've heard, from others, Morgan cross, Hispano-Arab/some kind of PRE cross....
He's changed hands a ton of times in his life, so it's anybody's guess what his breed really is.

I'm gonna send in a breed DNA test for him this week, just for fun - to see what they come up with, but it'd be interesting to hear what you guys think!

He does have a genetic muscle disease [suspected RER, he's still in the testing process but is responding wonderfully to RER treatment/management protocol] that is relatively common in TBs, Arabs, and Standardbreds predominantly. It's also known in Andalusians, and, to a much smaller extent, in Quarter Horses.

Personally, I don't see much QH in him - other than his classic QH color and chunkiness..ie, things that are not QH-exclusive.

Personality-wise, he's VERY intelligent, thinks a lot, very sensitive, very intense, no "off" button! He's like a Border Collie...but a horse. He always needs a project, and he LOVES to work if he understands what's going on. If he doesn't understand - forget it. haha













Here he is walking around:


A smidge of trot, mostly canter:


He also has HUGE ears for a Quarter Horse, or an Arab. Basically donkey ears, adorable, adorable donkey ears. haha
And he takes a 5.5inch bit. His head is way too big for cob-sized bridles and halters, he's the definition of "horse size."
 
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#34 ·
The registry people emailed me this afternoon!

And guess what?

He is not registered with them, nor are either of his parents.

But that's the only bummer!

On the plus side, based on his allele frequencies, they feel there is a very strong chance that he is at least 50% Lipizzan.
He's also apparently lucky enough to have a gene that he inherited from both parents which shows up "3.6% of the time in the Lipizzan population" - which makes the group of Lipizzans he could be related to very small.
Plus, he's not grey. And since the majority of Lipizzans are grey, it suggests that his dad was not homozygous for grey, or his dad was bay - both rarities in the Lipizzan breed.
So that shrinks his possible relatives even more!

They were also able to determine, based on a sex-linked gene that he has, passed from his mom, that his mom was likely the Arabian and his dad was Lipizzan - that sex-linked gene shows up .3% of the time in Lips, so it's unlikely that his mom was Lipizzan.



Anyway, the registry people sound REALLY excited about him and are going to "introduce us" to their Facebook group, in hopes that someone has/knows of a relative of his! They seem to feel pretty strongly that his DNA is unusual enough that we may be able to find his lineage or at least find out more.

I'm excited about this!

I never, in a million billion years, would have thought that one little breed DNA test would lead to all this!
 
#39 ·
I agree, Dehda! Arabians can vary so much depending ont heir lines. It's quite interesting! :)





Haha I have done that! And I so agree! I found so many Lippys, of all genders, with so many hysterically "Fabio"-type 'mare faces'! It gave me such a laugh :) I really feel like it'd be super obvious if Fabio were gray. I think his color is what throws everyone, me included, off!


__________________________________


We've been working with the registry people and we have a few leads. One of them, the potentially strongest one, is that there was a woman in northern California who did a lot of Arab/Lipizzaner breeding in the early 2000s [Fabio was born around 2002/2003]. She unexpectedly passed away in 2005 and her horses ended up on the back burner, without a lot of [any??] care, for 6+ months.

FABIO has marks where a cob-sized halter grew into his face, so I figure that happened when he was 3ish as his head isn't that much bigger than cob-sized - how long do horse heads grow for?? The internet claims they stop growing around 3 or 4...
And the man who owned Fabio before Fabio ended up at in the killpen, described himself as having gotten Fabio "out of a bad situation" when he was 3 or 4. Fabio ended up at the auction because that man had gotten extremely sick/died.
Anyway, there are a lot of other possible stories that fit Fabio's story, but this one sounds somewhat promising right now!


I'm in the process of having a friend look that lady up on the Arabian Horse 'Datasource' on the off chance that turns something up.
The Lipizzan people are trying to help me with this lead, but it seems like everyone involved with it isn't super internet-active or something. It was so long ago, there's not much information online about that lady or her horses... :neutral:

Fingers crossed!
 
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