Tiger Horse stallion. Action Shots Photography
The Tiger Horse Association
1604 Fescue Circle
Huddleston, Virginia 24104
www.tigerhorses.org
Does it have stripes? Does it roar instead of neigh? Well no, but the Tiger Horse is certainly worth roaring about! It is a colorful saddle horse with distinct Spanish conformation and a comfortable riding gait. As an added bonus, it has the striking color patterns found on such modern breeds as Appaloosa horses. With its gait and Appaloosa type spotting, it is a rare and unique breed.
El Caballo Tigre has a long, proud history that stretches back into the mists of Spanish antiquity. Its smooth four-beat intermediate gaits and beautiful color patterns made it a favorite of the nobility and wealthy. It carried both conquerors and the conquered while forming new empires all across the world. It had a dramatic impact on Native American tribes, changing the course of their history. Both the Spanish and Native Americans knew and loved these superior, beautiful travel horses. Today this spotted, smooth riding breed can be found almost unchanged living in sheltered pockets across the American West.
European History
Thirty thousand years ago in the caves of Spain, unknown artists painted horses wearing rope halters. Some of the these horses were distinctively marked with leopard spotting or white hip blanket patterns, which are now known to be largely controlled by the incompletely dominant Leopard Complex (Lp) gene. These horses were members of the proto-warmblood herds that roamed Europe. Over the millennia, Iberian breeders infused the blood of horses from northern climates, East Asia, and North Africa into the proto warmbloods and gradually produced horses with smooth gait and great pride, upon which the Spanish Jennet breed was developed.
Centuries later, the Jennet horse experienced an upswing when Ferdinand II came to the Spanish throne in 1479 and passed the Gentleman’s Law, which stated that “all gentlemen must ride stallions.” Due to the fact that not all “fine gentlemen” were good horsemen, this law intensified the breeding of horses that had great presence, but were gentle and docile in nature. These influences ensured that the Jennet would remain a favorite riding mount of European horsemen from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. In 1593 Salomon de al Broue, horse master to Henry IV of France, wrote of the Spanish Jennet: “Comparing the better horses in order to appreciate their greater perfection, I must place the Spanish at the top and give it my vote for being the most noble, the best conformed, the bravest and the most worthy of being mounted by a Great King.”
Jennet horses in wild color patterns became quite popular during the colonizing period of Europe. Many paintings of the time depict colorful Spanish horses in all patterns, from sabino, overo, and tobiano pintos, to the patterns variously called blooded, blood spotted, trouite (French for trout-like speckling) and leopard or tiger, which were various descriptions of the Lp patterned horses. Horses with these patterns were referred to by the Spanish as Caballo Tigre, or Tiger Horses. The Spanish still use the word “tiger” for all patterned cats, as there is no word for leopard in the Spanish language. This habit carried over into the description of other animals. Thus the name “tiger” was used to describe horses of the eye-catching and exotic spotted color patterns that are today associated with the Appaloosa, Knabstrupper, and Noriker horse breeds, all of which share the Tiger Horse of the Jennet breed as a common ancestor.
U.S. History
In the early 1500s, the Spanish began exporting horses to the American continents, and by the mid 1500s, they established important breeding centers in Central and South America. With the English colonization of the New World, however, Spanish horses began to lose favor in the face of the influence of the English Thoroughbred. Many Jennet horses, including those with the Tiger pattern, were exported as trade goods to Canadian colonies, where they rapidly spread across the North American Continent. Thus the Jennet became the ancestor of all North American gaited breeds.
By this time, Native American tribes began acquiring horses, and the southern and western tribes had the purest Spanish mounts, which came directly from Spain and the West Indies. Many of these horses exhibited four-beat or ambling gaits, and they came in all colors and patterns, reflecting their Jennet heritage. Native tribes dearly loved all the wildest color patterns, and this love helped to preserve Tiger Horses.
The Ni Mii Pu (Nez Perce) tribe of the Pacific Northwest was known for its spotted horses. Its first horses would have had very pure Spanish blood and were acquired from the Shoshone in the 1700 to 1730 time frame. Ni Mii Pu Indians became premier horse breeders and developed excellent herds; they even improved the technique of gelding. They especially prized Tiger patterns, which were not plentiful, and traded to acquire them whenever possible.
By the mid 1700s, a significant population of imported Dutch crossed leopard horses were brought to the southwestern parts of Canada and to the Pacific Northwest of the United States. They were from stock originating with Prince Phillip of Spain who bred spotted Iberian horses by crossing Dutch warmbloods with Jennets. This new style of Iberians was closer in type to the modern Lipizzaner and Lusitano and was enormously popular in Europe.
Particularly popular were leopard spotted horses, and in fact, leopard spotted Iberians from that bloodstock became the foundation for the modern Lipizzaner. Just around the turn of the 1700s, the spotted Iberian began to be less admired, which was the reason the horses were sent in large numbers to North America, especially Canada and the northern tier of the United States.
The Ni Mii Pu obtained these horses through trade and added them to their breeding pool, which was producing a distinctive and superior horse with strong Spanish/American characteristics. The new Iberian type of spotted Tigers figured strongly into their breeding programs, which were perhaps the finest of any of the Native American tribes.
Not only did the Ni Mii Pu acquire Tiger Horses from Canadian traders, but tribal oral history also tells of special stallions bought from Russian traders. These light horses, called Ghostwind Stallions, seem to have been of a color pattern that is now called few-spot or snowcap and would have been very light horses—homozygous for the Lp gene (leopard complex), making them nearly 100 percent producers of Tiger patterned horses. These horses were not Russian, but Spanish, and most likely were obtained from the Spanish in California where Russians established farms.
Thus the breeding programs of the Ni Mii Pu were heavily influenced by the blood of the horse “most worthy of being mounted by a Great King.” The excellence of Ni Mii Pu horses is recorded in the journal of Meriwether Lewis, written during the Lewis and Clark expedition in 1804. Lewis wrote: “Some of those horses are pided with large spots of white irregularly scattered and intermixed with [a dark color] much like our best blooded horses in Virginia, which they resemble as well in fleetness and bottom as in form and color.”
The Ni Mii Pu bred their horses to be fast, tough, and easy keepers. Temperament was also important, as they had a relationship with their horses reminiscent of what the Bedouins had with their desert horses. Of critical importance was that the horses had to be surefooted and smooth moving to handle the rough terrain of the Ni Mii Pu homeland. This was one trait that was particularly retained from their Spanish heritage, and it was common for the Ni Mii Pu herds to have the ability to perform a four-beat intermediate gait or saddle gait. It came to be called the “Indian Shuffle” by white settlers and was a comfortable riding gait that was highly prized. Since it was much easier on horse, rider, and equipment, cowboys would pay as much as $50 or more for a “Shuffler” at a time when a good broke cowpony would go for around $30.
In 1877, war between the Ni Mii Pu and the U.S. Army lead the cavalry on an extensive chase after the Ni Mii Pu. The tribe’s horses were able to outrun, outmaneuver, and outlast everything the U.S. Cavalry could send against them while living off the winter countryside. The only reason the Ni Mii Pu were caught was due to the advantage the army had with the telegraph, by which means it was able to lay an ambush.
The conquest and relocation of the tribe brought a near total dispersal of its huge horse herds. Many of the Tiger type horses, however, could still be found in the Pacific Northwest because they had been well distributed among the Native American tribes through trade. Also some ranchers either owned Tiger Horses or held portions of the Ni Mii Pu herds until the tribe’s eventual return. Records also show that most of the military confiscated horses were shipped back east because they had proven their superiority to the cavalry’s horses.
Registry
In 1938, Claude Thompson, an Oregon farmer, established a registry to preserve the spotted horses believed to have been developed by the Ni Mii Pu. Although the founding of the Appaloosa Horse Club brought attention to these horses and prevented their total extinction, it also brought a crossbreeding program of Arabian, Thoroughbred, and Quarter Horse blood, which mostly eliminated original Tiger characteristics from the modern Appaloosa. There remained, however, pockets of the original type in Canada, remote areas of the Pacific Northwest, and those herds held in trust by ranch families. In addition, there were breeders who had always adhered to foundation breeding and had regularly produced horses of the ancient Tiger type and four-beat gaits.
Tiger Horse gelding (left) and mare. Action Shots Photography
In 1991, a small group started a research project to learn the origins of gait in Appaloosas. This turned out to be an endeavor that lasted more than three years and unearthed a significant amount of information differing markedly from the accepted Appaloosa history. It was then decided that a new organization was needed to find and preserve what was left of the ancient Tiger type horses. In 1994, the Tiger Horse Association was founded and began registration of horses that resembled the original Tiger Horse.
In order to understand exactly what should be looked for, a comprehensive breed standard was developed with the assistance of experts like Dr. D. Phillip Sponenberg, a specialist in color genetics and Spanish horses, and Dr. Deb Bennett, a horse historian and conformation expert, as well as many members of the Ni Mii Pu who contributed oral history to the research. Dr. Gus Cothran, an equine geneticist, now continues the DNA work for the association to ensure proper records of parentages and the genetic health of the Tiger Horse breed, as well as charting the advances made toward establishing a true breed.
Results from these efforts have produced some outstanding examples of what Tiger Horses are all about. A Tiger Horse named Snowline Romeo is the first stallion of any gaited breed to finish a 100-mile endurance race and has participated in several others, with 1,015 miles of endurance races now completed. This demonstrates the heartiness of the breed.
In 2007, the Tiger Horse Association joined with Friends of Sound Horses (FOSH), which enforces zero tolerance for soring of gaited horses for performance. (Soring is the deliberate application of products that produce better elevation of the horse’s legs for the show ring, but cause the horse pain). It also became part of the Independent Judges Association and contributed to its rulebook. These partnerships mean that Tiger Horse Association members can show their Tiger Horses in any FOSH or affiliated show anywhere in North America. The first National Tiger Horse Association show was held as part of the North American Pleasure Gaited Horse Championship of FOSH.
Tiger Horses are well represented at shows. At their first national show and with limited horses, they placed in fourteen Open Gaited Breed Classes in addition to the five Tiger specific classes offered. The placements included a first and second in Gaited Dressage, first in In-Hand Trail Obstacle, and second and third in Pole Bending.
Registration Requirements
The Tiger Horse Association accepts horses that display the Tiger Horse characteristics of leopard complex (Appaloosa) color patterns, an even four-beat intermediate gait, and some elements of Spanish conformation as its base foundation stock. These horses can come from the Appaloosas, Spanish Mustangs, Paso breeds, Native American or wild horse herds, or some of the less well known Spanish based breeds, such as the Florida Cracker Horse.
As a direct descendant of the Spanish Jennet, the Tiger Horse is a much older breed type than the Quarter Horse, Arabian, and Thoroughbred. In order to maintain the original Spanish conformation and four-beat gait, no horse that is primarily of these modern breeds’ conformation is eligible for registration or should be used for breeding.
If a Tiger Horse does not clearly show an intermediate four-beat gait, then it is not accepted for registration. Since the ability to gait has been actively bred out of leopard complex horses, it is understood that outside gaited blood must be brought in to strengthen the gaiting ability of Tiger Horses, but all outcross breeding is allowed for one generation only.
While the four-beat gait is a trait of paramount importance in the breed, the Spanish conformation and color patterns are equally important. The leopard complex gene (Lp), which is responsible for the Tiger color patterns, is not always inherited, or sometimes when inherited, it does not show strong characteristics. Therefore, offspring of registered Tiger Horses that do not show the Lp characteristics are still eligible for full THA registration, though they cannot be awarded a Permanent Championship. While offspring of registered Tiger Horses that do not exhibit any of the Tiger characteristics can be fully registered for any performance or breeding purposes, they are to be disqualified from the Model Categories.
All Tiger horse breeding stock must be DNA tested. No horse with the graying gene or pintado markings is acceptable for registration.
Breed and Show Criteria
The Tiger Horse is an easy gaited riding horse with a specific color preference. It is a rare and unique breed that is not necessarily right for everyone and should not be altered to meet the whims of an individual or the marketplace
In the performances show ring, the horse should “cap,” or show moderate overstride, with some horses showing more overstride as speed increases. The horse should have enough lift in front to cover uneven ground, and the stride should be medium in length.
All horses shown in Tiger Horse classes must be barefoot or trail shod with hoof and shoe lengths suitable for sustained long distance travel. Tail and mane extensions are not allowed in the show ring.
In the event that a judge has more than one individual exhibiting breed excellence, preference should be given to the one with the most striking coat pattern.
Standards
General impression: The Tiger Horse is a colorful, gaited, light horse breed that is well balanced and sturdy with no extreme muscling.
Head: Ears are of medium length, generally curved and notched, mobile, and alert. Eyes are large and prominent, with white sclera surrounding the iris, which can give a surprised expression. Viewed from the front, the head should look lean, with no cheekiness. A broad flat forehead between widely spaced eyes should taper to a fine muzzle with large sensitive nostrils. Profile can be straight to slightly convex. The ideal profile is an undulating Nató profile, in which the convex curve does not extend up between the eyes. Concave or dish profile is not typical or desirable, nor is an extreme Roman nose.
Neck: The neck should be set high, is moderate to long, well balanced, and blends smoothly into the wither. The neck of both sexes should be well arched with a clean throatlatch. Ewe neck, short straight neck, or a neck set carried too low to be properly raised and arched are serious faults. A jowly throatlatch is to be faulted.
Forehand: Withers should be well defined with a sloping shoulder. The ideal shoulder angle is 45 degrees. There should be a good depth of heart girth, and legs should be straight with a long, strong upper arm. The knees, set low, should be large, flat, and shield shaped. Cannons should be short and dense. Viewed from the front, the chest is of medium width, frequently with a well defined “V” between the forelegs. Muscling of the forehand should be long and flat. Heavy, bunchy muscling of the chest, shoulder, and upper arm is not acceptable. Extremely wide or narrow chest, A-frame front, upright shoulder, buck or calf knees, and toeing in or out are serious faults. Long cannons should be faulted.
Back: The back should be short coupled and strong, with a well muscled loin. Insufficient muscling to the loin, a long, weak back, or any crookedness are serious faults.
Hindquarters: The sloping croup should be level (in height) with, or lower than, the withers and the tail should be set low. Thighs are medium to long, with a well developed stifle and gaskin of equal length. Hocks should be well let down with short dense cannons. Hocks in some individuals will have slightly more angle, and some will have a slight tendency to toe out in the rear. Extreme sickle hocks or cow hocks are serious faults. Viewed from behind, the horse’s thighs should be fairly flat, and the hips should tend toward the “rafter” build. The hindquarters should be strongly muscled, but it should be long, flat muscle. Heavy, bunchy muscling giving the appearance of the apple- or heart-shaped rear is not acceptable. Croups that are higher than the withers, poorly muscled rears, and weak stifles or hocks are serious faults. Long cannons should also be faulted.
Legs: They should be sturdy with dense substantial bone, as well as clean with strong dry tendons and moderate, strong, flexible pasterns. Hooves are dense, resilient, substantial, and usually striped. Front hooves should be round, while rear ones are usually slightly smaller and more oval. Neither toes nor heels should be long. Legs and hooves should not appear clumsy or drafty. Very fine or fragile legs and feet are not desirable. Extremely long and low pasterns, or extremely short and upright pasterns, are a serious fault.
Size: The Tiger Horse ranges from 14 to 16 hands, with the height between 14.2 and 15.2 hands being most typical and desirable. Weight can range from 700 to 1,300 pounds.
Mane and tail: Hair can range from being nearly nonexistent to extremely long and full, but it should always be completely natural. Any artificial or surgical methods used to alter the natural set, carriage, or movement of the tail is strictly forbidden, as is tail docking. While braiding, roaching, pulling, and trimming of mane and tail hair is tolerated for horses that are actively being exhibited in disciplines requiring such alterations, these practices are not encouraged and will not be called for in Tiger Horse showing, including Model Category.
Temperament: The Tiger Horse is affectionate, gentle, and sensible with excellent learning capacity and a great deal of heart. A controlled spirit and great sense of pride, often referred to as brio, is common.
Gait: The Tiger Horse is primarily a gaited, working saddle horse that, in addition to a walk and canter, must perform an even, natural intermediate four-beat gait. Evenness of gait and the ability to hold gait are of great importance, as are the athleticism, soundness, and smoothness of the gait. All gaits should have good fluid movement, with excellent reach and drive. Termino, while allowed, is not a sought-after and, when present, must be carefully evaluated for soundness. All gaits must be completely natural. The ability to perform a range of speed and collection in gait is highly desirable. A horse that can only perform a trot or two-beat pace is not eligible for registration.
Any attempt to alter the horse’s natural way of going, such as varying the length and angles of the hooves, padding the hooves, weighting the feet in any manner, or inflicting deliberate pain on the horse, is strictly forbidden.
Color: The Tiger Horse is a gaited breed with a color preference. Any base coat color (black, bay, or similar others) is acceptable. In the ideal Tiger Horse, visible Tiger characteristics and coat pattern should be present. Characteristics include prominent white sclera around the iris of the eye, striped hooves, and parti-colored or mottled skin. Common coat patterns include leopard, blanket (with or without spots), roan (with or without spots), and snowflake.
Tiger Horse mare and foal. White eye sclera, mottled skin, and spotting are evident. Kellswater Farm
Credit: The Tiger Horse Association