Indian Shuffler

This is my horse Ranger, he is registered with the ApHC or Appaloosa Horse Club, he has a 90+% foundation designation and is eligible for registration with the Colorado Ranger Horse Association or CRHA. Ranger is a gaited appaloosa called an Indian Shuffler, he does the Indian Shuffle, this is a very smooth gait but I have still not been able to ride him, maybe someday.

He is a palomino few spot although the Appaloosa Horse Club registered him as a red roan, we argued this point with them on his full brother who was a palomino leopard, he had large palomino spots and they wouldn't take our word for it because they are so much smarter than the rest of us. After many phone calls and extra pictures we finally got them to change him to a palomino, the only reason that we bothered was because he was so obviously a palomino that his papers just didn't match him saying that he was a red roan.

When Ranger came along and we sent his paperwork in, we marked his color as a palomino and again those superior, intelligent people at the ApHC sent his papers back as a red roan. Since Ranger is mostly white and we were planning on keeping him anyway, we didn't bother to argue.

This past year we had a chestnut leopard filly born, her spots are dark chestnut with no white hair in them, she is out of a chestnut AQHA mare. The ApHC sent her papers back as red roan, we called and argued, they let us know how color blind we are. They have never seen this filly but it is us who do not understand horse colors. Even our Vet agreed that she was a chestnut with no roaning in her spots.

We had a similar problem with the AQHA or American Quarter Horse Association two years ago with a line backed, red dun colt. They sent his papers back to us as a chestnut because it was impossible for a chestnut stallion and a gray mare to produce a red dun foal. We called and talked to the man who takes care of this sort of thing and he looked at the pictures and the bloodlines and said that those bloodlines did produce red duns, so he changed his papers to match the colt. This colt's dam was born a grulla and turned gray as a two year old, so to say that a grullo and a chestnut could not produce a red dun was ridiculous. The AQHA treated us with respect and was reasonable.

You would think that since Ranger's dam has produced many palominos and our leopard filly is out of a chestnut mare that the ApHC would be reasonable too. But the end result is that we have two registered ApHC horses whose papers do not match them.

Ruby

In the midst of all of this chaos, Ruby was born very early on Monday morning. She is a huge AQHA chestnut filly out of our Chestnut AQHA mare, Flashy Sugar Star (Sissy) by the Red Dun reining stallion, Pepi Holidoc. When she was born we didn't even need to raise her tail, with her size and big bone we were certain that she was a colt. We were both shocked when we finally did look and found out that she was a filly.

Her entrance into this world was uneventful and she is about 3 times bigger than Miracle, she even looks like she might have been sired by a Belgium. The other thing that is just too strange about the size of this filly is that her Mother just barely looked pregnant. We would never have dreamed that she would have a foal so large, big boned and muscular.

Ruby has a star, strip and snip on her face. She also has some white on her feet but we are not yet certain how much. She could have four white feet but the hair on her legs is such a light color at this time that we can't tell for sure.

She is a foal with an attitude and loves to show everyone just how much power she has. She is very playful and she is a kicker.