Surfer Dude's Gidget is a living matriarch of the current herd. She was born March 2002 and her parents were the chesnuts Surfer Dude and Virginia Belle. She's a half sister to Surf Queen, the dam of Surfer's Riptide. Gidget's had two daughters, a son, three granddaughters, and one grandson kept for the herd. She's one of the ponies I felt like I've known all her life.

Gidget is a chestnut like both of her parents.The foal of two chestnuts can only be chestnut. All of her foals are chestnut because the sires were chestnut too.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html.

Like her sire she has splashed white 1. Her blaze and socks is Gidget's expression of it. She's had multiple flashy "splashy" looking foals and some with blue eyes.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/splash.html

Gidget is sooty like her sire and many of her siblings. She tends on the darker sootier side for her family. Her mane and tail often have black hairs. The color shifts with age and with the seasons as the two pictures show.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html

Also like much of her family Gidget is flaxen. She's not as blonde as her half brother/nephew Surfer's Riptide. The color changes through the seasons. And it's changed as she's aged. Her mane and not her tail is usually flaxen in her summer coat. And her tail was more flaxen when she was younger.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/flaxen.html

The solid black Imagine Mandy is an unknown mare today despite her being a favorite color. She was born in 1991 and died around 2002. The first photo by Kathy O'Dette is from 1994. The second photo by Kelly Lidard is from near the end of her life in 2001. Imagine Mandy's identification number was #12. Both of her parents are unknown and she has no known descendants in the current herd. Interestingly Millennium Millie born in 2000 was almost her twin in color and markings (no known relation though).

Imagine Mandy was a black carrying recessive chestnut. One of her 3 known foals was chestnut. Both parents must have chestnut for a foal to be chestnut. Even though her dam is unknown a foal photo of Imagine Mandy has been found and she's following a chestnut mare that appears to be her dam. So she would have inherited red from her dam.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/black.html
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html

Black Pearl of the Sea is the 2022 son of Ace's Black Tie Affair and Black Pearl. I saw grown up photos of him posted recently and remembered I had his test results. Thanks to Deb Shade for sending them!

He tested as E/e which means he's a black carrying recessive chestnut. Both of his parents carry chestnut so it could have come from either of them. He can't have agouti since he's black and his test showed that as a/a.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/black.html

There was a possibility he could have been homozygous for tobiano because both of his parents are. His test showed that he wasn't and only has one copy: TO/n or heterozygous.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html

He tested as nd1/nd2 which means he could or could not have primitive markings like a dorsal stripe.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/primitivemarkings.html

Dakota Sky's Cody 2 Socks, Cody for short, turns 20 year this year. She's a daughter of the half Arabian Copper Moose and the 1/4 Arabian Stevenson's Dakota Sky. Two of her foals and two of her grandfoals have been kept for the herd.
Arabian outcrossing: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/arabian.html

Cody is bay so she has black and agouti, which keeps that black on the points. She's like her sire, a buckskin, but she didn't inherit his cream. Since her dam was chestnut that tells us that she carries recessive chestnut. Interestingly, her 8 foals have all been bay. I think she might be homozygous for agouti, but her not having a red foals appears to be luck of the draw. All but one of her foals was sired by Wild Thing, who also had recessive chestnut. And her other foal was by a chestnut. Perhaps if she had more foals then red would eventually have popped up.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html

I think Cody may have a white pattern of some type. A couple of her foals were a little flashier than would be expected. She didn't inherit tobiano from her dam but perhaps something else is there. There's quite a few white patterns like the Eden Whites or W24 that produce minimal to no white markings. But they can boost the amount of white on a pony that has something like tobiano. No way to tell without testing but it's something to think about!

Shared Impulse was a bay pinto mare born in 2004. Her sire was the chestnut tobiano Cherokee Chief and her dam was the black tobiano Paint it Black. She got her name because her four buyback donors had the "shared impulse" at the auction to buy her. Shared Impulse unfortunately had a short life as she contracted pythosis and was put down in 2009. She had three foals and none were kept for the herd. Her full sister Mickey's Mocha also passed away young from pythosis. But her half sister Seaside still has a legacy on the island with Seaside Miracle and the offspring of Tuney. Her sire also has multiple descendants still on Assateague.

Shared Impulse was a bay with a chestnut sire so that tells us she carried recessive chestnut. If we didn't know her sire, she produced a chestnut pinto filly in 2007 so that also tells us she carried chestnut. She and her sire Cherokee Chief had one copy of agouti. Because Shared Impulse's dam was black she didn't have a copy. Agouti is what makes a black into a bay. Cherokee Chief sired a couple blacks and couldn't have if he'd had two copies of agouti.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/bay.html
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/chestnut.html

Both of Shared Impulse's parents were tobiano pinto and so was she. All three of her foals were also tobiano. She might have been homozygous for tobiano, but three foals wasn't enough to know for sure.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/tobiano.html

She was more on the minimal side of tobianos. Her dam was too. They appear to have something suppressing the amount of white tobiano is trying to put on them. And it appears to be genetic even though it's not something that can be tested for.
https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/minimaltobiano.html