Historical Pony: Herman's Fancy Ruby

This is Herman's Fancy Ruby who was probably born in the 1980s. Her CVFC identification number was A23 and she had the nickname Clown before her name was figured out.
She was a buckskin tobiano with sooty. The golden tones to her coat and her foals are what tells us that she was a buckskin. Sooty adding dark hairs to her coat caused her to look so dark. Because she was a sooty she got darker as she aged. The first photo is from 1987 and while dark she was fairly light colored. The next photo is from 1992 and Herman's Fancy Ruby looks the most like a buckskin. In the last photo she is very dark. It's from 2001 and she died that winter.

I'm also eyeing the jagged-ness of the edges of her pinto pattern. Tobiano's only are usually smoother than that. So she may have had another pinto pattern lurking in there.
Like many older mares we don't know if Herman's Fancy Ruby has any descendants on Assateague. Given her long life it's certainly possible! She was on the cover of the 1996 Chincoteague Island brochure and the 1999 Pony Penning issue of the Chincoteague Beacon.

Learn about sooty on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html