Historical Pony: Starfish

This little mare is Starfish who was born in the late 1970s. Her CVFC identification number was 02. Starfish was a palomino tobiano who also had sooty. Sooty mixes black hairs into the coat color and darkens it. Sooty is often quite dramatic on palominos. Learn all about sooty on my website: https://www.thecolorfulchincoteague.com/sooty.html

The look of sooty often varies with age and thanks to Starfish's long life we can see how she changed. The first photo is from 1981 and the second two years later. The photos are old but you can see she has a bit of dark on her face and some on her legs. These are common indications of the presence of sooty. She's fairly light colored otherwise. The third photo is around 20 years later in 2002. Starfish is a good bit darker palomino than she was as a young mare with quite a lot of dark on face. She got very dark as she reached the end of her life. The last photo is from 2004 and Starfish died in 2005. Dappling is common with sooty and she often did through her life.

Starfish has no traceable descendants on Assateague at this time, but considering she lived on Assateague for close to 30 years it would be foolish to rule it out. There was a another palomino pinto mare she was often with and were sometimes mistaken for each other, perhaps a daughter? Starfish's first known foal was born in 1978 and amazingly her last was in 2004!