# Brindle Horses

> An archive site documenting brindle and striped coat patterns in horses, donkeys, and mules — among the rarest equine coat colors. Maintained from January 1997 through November 2008 by J. Sharon Batteate (1948–2010) of Stockton, California, who bred two documented lines of inheritable brindle horses and assembled the longest-running photographic record of the pattern.

The site predates Google. It went live at `members.aol.com/brindlehos/` in January 1997 — eight months before the google.com domain was registered (September 15, 1997), and twenty months before Google Inc. incorporated (September 4, 1998). In January 1997 CSS1 was a year-old spec barely supported, XHTML did not yet exist, and PageRank had not been published. Web discovery happened through AOL Hometown member directories, GeoCities neighborhoods, and webring sidebars. The author hand-coded the pages and found readers through portal listings and word of mouth.

The mare Brenda Batty Atty featured here appears as Fig. 8.47 in D. Phillip Sponenberg's *Equine Color Genetics* (1996); breeding stock documented on this site (Dunbar's Gold × Sharp One) was the basis for the UC Davis chimerism study published in the *Quarter Horse Journal* (Feb 2006) and presented by Dr. Cecilia Penedo at the 2006 Horse Genome Mapping Workshop. The site is cited in Wikipedia and remains the primary online source for several of the documented cases.

The site is a specimen of the personal webpage era — content from before the web was indexed, monetized, or professionalized. Maintained by one person, by hand, across three host migrations (AOL Hometown → GeoCities → brindlehorses.com), for over a decade. The content is closed — last updated November 5, 2008; the author passed away in 2010, and the inheritable brindle line documented here continued in other hands.

Surviving examples of this era are genuinely rare. Most personal websites from 1997 are entirely gone; the few that remain typically survive only as partial Wayback captures, not continuous primary records. This site is the work of a single author, hand-coded over eleven years of active updates, cited in academic literature on equine genetics, and still the primary online source for several of the cases it documents.

## Core sections

- [Brindle Horses main page](https://www.brindlehorses.com/brindlehos/index.htm): the main brindle archive — pattern description, registries (IBHA, ABEA, BSEI), breeder updates, and articles on chimerism vs. inheritable brindle.
- [Yipes! Stripes! — Color in Horses](https://www.brindlehorses.com/battyatty/index.htm): companion site on all forms of equine striping (dun factor, countershading, palomino/buckskin, foal coat, dappling).
- [Historical References to Brindle in Horses](https://www.brindlehorses.com/l3l13/hist-ref-def/index.htm): the academic reference page — citations to Solanet (1930, 1955), Lusis (1942, *Genetica* vol. 23), Odriozola (1951), Wiersema (1977), Sponenberg, Jones & Bogart, Silvers — and definitions used throughout the site.
- [Brindle Characteristics](https://www.brindlehorses.com/l3l13/characteristics/notbrin.htm): visual criteria for distinguishing brindle from dun factor, coat texturing, seasonal variation.

## Archives and slideshows

- [Monthly journal archive, 1997–2008](https://www.brindlehorses.com/jsbatteate/index.htm): roughly monthly write-ups on newly reported brindles, breeding results, and emerging research — running index back to February 1997.
- [Brindle Horse slideshow](https://www.brindlehorses.com/brinslides/slide0.htm): photographic catalog of confirmed brindle and indeterminate-pattern horses, donkeys, and mules.
- [Table of Brindles](https://www.brindlehorses.com/brinslides/table.htm): same catalog in tabular form, sorted by pattern strength.

## Breeding records and individual horses

- [Brenda Batty Atty pedigree (Batty Atty Acres)](https://www.brindlehorses.com/battyatty/webped/webped.htm): pedigree and offspring records for the foundation brindle mare — three brindled foals from five, evidence cited for an inheritable brindle gene.
- [Breeders and stallion listings](https://www.brindlehorses.com/brindlehos/breeders/overview.htm): per-breeder galleries and per-stallion profile pages.

## Companion articles

- [Stripes Aren't Just For Zebras!](https://www.brindlehorses.com/stripedhos/patton-article/patton.htm): article by Leah Patton (ADMS) on striping in donkeys, mules, and zebra hybrids.
- [Striping and Camouflage in Horses](https://www.brindlehorses.com/stripedhos/striped-article/striped.htm): article by J. Sharon Batteate on protective coloration and striping types, originally published in *4-Beat Magazine* Spring 1993.
- [Dappling and Reverse Dappling](https://www.brindlehorses.com/jbatteate/dapple/dapple.htm): author article on dappling across coat colors.