Spots before the eyes

Knabstruppers, They’re Baroque-shaped (well, some of them are) and spotty. What’s not to like?

Having said that, I don’t have many of them – yet. In fact until recently I only had one – this old Britains Black Beauty which I repainted, and customised to have a permanent bridle. My main reason for painting her spotty was to try and ‘visually enhance’ her conformation a bit (!) Then, as a spotted horse with a ‘European’ body shape, I felt she’d do best as a Knabstrupper.  I named her Gilda as I had a vague idea it was a Danish name.

At the time I didn’t really know where to start in finding her a pedigree from European sources, so I turned to the members of IPABRA. Alice, the owner of All Hallows Equestrian Centre, was active there, and had a large sire and dam list of European breeds including the more obscure ones. They were all meticulously researched with pedigrees going back to real horses, so I felt very confident in asking her to recommend two of her models as parents. As the model was not noticeably one type or the other, we gave her one more ‘Baroque-type’ parent and one more ‘sport-type’. I admit she’s not the greatest model out there, but she’s recently been doing quite well in ridden classes.

However, I recently got another Knabstrupper, by a slightly roundabout route! About 2 years ago someone posted a ‘Pay It Forward’ challenge on Facebook. It ran something like this: ‘I promise to send something hand-made during 2011 to the first 5 people who comment on this status and then share it themselves’. I thought this was a great idea to catalyse me into the many creative projects I had in mind, so I signed up for it.

One of the people who signed up to receive something from me was a Swedish collector, so I offered to paint a horse for her, and we agreed on a Knabstrupper, her favourite breed. Someone else kindly donated a Stone Chips Andalusian for me to paint, and so (near the end of 2011, I have to admit!) I created this little guy and sent him off.

About a month ago, I was casually browsing around on MH$P (not something I do that often of late) and was very surprised to see a group of minis for sale including my spotty horse! It turned out that his owner had decided to get out of mini-scale models and had sold him on, only for his next owner to make the same decision. When I contacted her she was delighted to sell him to me, and I was very pleased to be able to welcome him home. As you can imagine, he took quite a lot of time and effort (see below!), and I’m glad that I’ll now have the chance to show and breed from him.

So, he needed a pedigree, and now there seems to be more Knabstrupper source material on the Internet than there used to be. For example, the Danish society website has a very good illustrated page of stallions at stud, with a lot of pedigree on each horse when you click on his picture. OK, it’s in Danish, but you don’t really need to be able to speak the language to look at a picture, read the pedigree, and work out that “Født” means ‘foaling date’. The British website also has a stallions page, although obviously there aren’t so many stallions over here. Nevertheless, it was from here that I ended up finding my stallion’s pedigree. Looking at the imported stallion Tornado af Knabstrup, I thought he looked quite similar to my model and was stated to be of Baroque type. His pedigree also looked interesting, as his website notes that he is ‘one of the very few Knabstruppers with 100% purebred status in 4th generation’. What this means is that, as outcrosses to various other breeds are allowed by the Knabstrupper registry, many registered Knabstruppers actually have parents, grandparents and so on, of other breeds. I believe this is becoming more and more common as the current market favours the sport-horse type, so breeds such as the Danish Warmblood, Trakehner, Frederiksborg and Oldenburg are being used. I like the idea of a stallion carrying the older Knabstrupper bloodlines, and as Tornado is still quite young, I decided that the simplest thing was to make my model a full brother to him.

He still needs a name, so I am playing with putting various words into Google Translate and seeing if I like the Danish version! I was going to go with one of the words for ‘magician’ or ‘wizard’, but then again, ‘orkan’ (hurricane) is nice and easy to remember (and to spell!) and is similar to Tornado, so I haven’t quite made my mind up yet.

Meanwhile there’s another horse in the pipeline… I was after a Chips Andy to repaint for quite a while and ended up getting several, by various means. One of them has had his head and neck turned to the left, which I really like, and I want to keep him as another stallion. As he stood there in his undercoat, I was convinced that he was asking to be buckskin blanket, which led me into a search as to whether the Cream dilution (responsible for buckskin) exists in Knabstruppers.

The consensus seems to be that it doesn’t, but that it is possible to introduce it via the permitted outcrosses. I found internet references to a buckskin colt bred this way who had existed in the UK for a while but unfortunately died young; furthermore I wasn’t quite sure whether his dam was of an approved breed or not. Another possible way to pedigree my horse might have been from the well-known Gestut Falkenhorst, putting a Knabstrupper mare to one of their dilute TB or Oldenburg stallions. 

Yet another way would have been to use Frederiksborg blood, as Cream is found in that breed. Lesli Kathman tipped me off about the fascinating Finnish site Sukuposti, where, in the Gallery, you can browse horses of a particular breed by using the ‘valitse rotu’ menu, and then see the pedigree of each by clicking on their photo and then their name. It is very good for some of the more obscure European breeds who might not appear elsewhere! This brought up a number of dilute Frederiksborg mares who could be used as a dam for my buckskin horse.

However, I’m now tending to move away from this idea, for two reasons. Firstly, a buckskin-based Knabstrupper would require documentation in the showring, setting out all the above justification for his colour. Secondly, any horse along these lines would be largely sporthorse or TB, whereas my horse is more the Baroque type. So I’m wondering if perhaps the horse is asking to be chestnut blanket? I really like the look of this fellow, so perhaps a son of his out of a spotted mare? Watch this space!