Horse breeds, types and coat colours
Find the horse you want to learn about. These 21 guides cover named breeds alongside horse types and coat colour, with information before optional gift ideas.
Choose a guide below to explore the background and characteristics of a horse. Not every entry is a breed: the index also includes types such as cobs and hunters, and black coat colour.
All 21 guides
- Andalusian horse: Spain's baroque horse, thick mane, arched neck, the breed that built the classical riding hall.
- Appaloosa: No two Appaloosas look the same: the spotted breed of the Pacific Northwest.
- Arabian horse: A millennium of selective breeding: refinement, fine bone, the foundation of every modern light-horse breed.
- Black horse: True black is one of the rarest coat colours in the horse, and one of the most striking things you can put on a wall.
- Cleveland Bay: England's oldest established breed, and one of the rarest in the world.
- Cobs: The family horse for half the country: cobs do the school-master job for a generation.
- Connemara pony: Ireland's native pony: limestone-bred, often grey, often the family's eventer.
- Friesian horse: Pure black, abundant feathering, long mane: the dramatic Dutch breed.
- Haflinger: Chestnut with flaxen mane, Tyrolean origin, the family pony with a 30-year working life.
- Hanoverian: The branded H, the German register that has produced Olympic medallists for two centuries.
- Hunters: Bone, substance, day in deep going: the British hunter is a type that survives.
- Irish Sport Horse: Tough, kind, brilliant over a fence: the working amateur's eventing horse.
- KWPN Dutch Warmbloods: Stamboek, Keur, Ster, Elite: the Dutch sport horse studbook with the predicate ladder.
- New Forest pony: Hampshire-born, semi-feral, the British family's native pony.
- Paint Horse: Tobiano, overo, tovero: every Paint Horse is visually unique by genetic design.
- Quarter Horse: America's working stock horse: sprint speed, cow sense, the dominant breed of the global horse register.
- Shetland pony: The smallest British native pony with the biggest personality on the yard.
- Shire horse: A tonne of horse with a kind eye and a feathered leg: the Shire is conservation in motion.
- Thoroughbred: Bay, chestnut, off-the-track: the British Thoroughbred has a second career after the racecourse.
- Warmblood horses: Hanoverian, KWPN, Trakehner, Holsteiner: the European sport horse register family.
- Welsh pony: Four Welsh sections, four different ponies: the breed family that runs British Pony Club.