Historical Pony: Snowball

Double dilutes have a long history on Assateague and this mare is one of them. This is Snowball who my friend Deb Noll photographed in the early 1980s. I think I've spotted her in a book photo or two also. It appears she was called Cotton by researcher Ronald Keiper during his study of Chincoteague Ponies in the 1970s.

There are three types of double dilutes and they all generally look the same so there's no way of knowing which she was. Snowball has the very pale cream coat color, pink skin, and bluegreen eyes that are the characteristics of double dilutes. In one of the books I think I spotted her in she has a buckskin pinto foal and the stallion she's running in behind is a chestnut pinto. If that stallion was the sire of her foal than she would have been a perlino or a smoky cream. If he wasn't then who knows!

Learn more about double dilutes on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/doubledilute.html