This post first appeared on October 15, 2012
In the comments section of the last post, some posters noted the similarity of the white areas to fleabitten grey. That is not an uncommon thing with appaloosa patterns. Although it is easiest to think of the action of Leopard Complex (Lp) as a form of progressive roaning, where white hairs gradually replace the colored ones to form what American horsemen call varnish roan, in actual practice the process can go both directions. That is, it can add white hairs to lighten the coat, and it can add concentrated bits of color to speckle the coat. These darker hairs are sometimes called repigmented spots because they typically occur after the coat has already begun to roan out, or in an area that previously had white patterning.

The varnish roan mare at the top of this post is a very good example. I have run photos of Freckles before for the series of posts on appaloosa mottling. I have easy access to her, since she shares a pasture with my own appaloosa pony, Sprinkles. This particular image shows her coloring from four years ago, when the lightest parts of coat were an even mixture of white and color. At that time, had she not had such pronounced varnish markings on her body, and a sprinkling of dark spots on her hips, she might easily have been mistaken for a pale grey. (This particular photo was taken in early May, so she had not fully shed out for the summer and was just a shade or two darker than she would be in summer coat.)

Here is Freckles as she appears now.

Each year she has gotten more pronounced dark ticking in the roaned areas of her coat, even as she gets lighter in the areas that were colored. This lighter ticking is most noticeable if you compare the right hind leg in the two pictures. The repigmented specks first began to appear on her shoulder, but over time they have spread across most of her body.

This close-up of her topline shows just how closely this resembles fleabitten grey. In fact, if I use Photoshop to remove the hip spots and what remains of her varnish marks, the resemblance to a true fleabitten grey is quite striking.

I suspect some type of repigmenting is part of what was going on with the roaned areas on the horse in the previous post. With Freckles, the flecking ties visually with what is already going on with her coat, so it looks less jarring. With the horse from the previous post, the odd transitions between his colored areas and the patterned areas make him look a bit like you pasted together parts of a bay appaloosa and a fleabitten grey.