See the next step in the process here: Making the horse—the tack

 

Why the different colored hooves? Any time a horse has white fur meet the hoof, the hoof will be a pinkish color. Otherwise, the hoof is gray. Sometimes, a hoof can be striped, if the white touches only part of the hoof! Ruth is experimenting with that type of coloration. We use either beige Super Sculpey or tan Sculpey III for “pink” hooves.

A horse’s nose is similar to the hooves—if white touches the nose, the nose will be pink where the white would have continued. Otherwise, it’s the same color as the rest of the nose. In this video, you can see Rebecca adding a strip of “pink” on the horse’s nose as a continuation of his blaze.

Horses have a bone in their tail that is about half the length of it. They can raise it when excited or happy, but it doesn’t bend. If you want your horse to look accurate, make sure you know how the bone in its tail goes. On the horse in the video here, the bone ends where the tail bends downward, about halfway along the length. This is because from there on to the tip, it’s just flowing hair.

If you really want to be accurate with your horse, add the “frog” in each hoof. This is the wedge or triangle that you can see Rebecca forming in the hooves. This is a soft part on a horse, like our own feet, and it is protected by the hard wall of the hoof. While horses don’t feel pain in the wall (which is why we can nail horseshoes onto it), they do feel pain in the frog. A stone caught in it can make a horse lame—just think how much you like stepping on a stone or toy in bare feet!