Horses and Donkeys and Mules and More

 

My molly mule, Delta Dawn

If you don't occupy the world where a "frog" is found in a horse's hoof or "brain surgery" means castration of a male horse, you might not know the ins and outs of horse hybrid terminology. Most people know a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey, but it's not exactly that simple. Let's dive into the lexicon of horse hybridization.

The humble, utilitarian donkey goes by a few different names. There's the humble burro, a donkey with a Spanish accent: small, tough little critters brought to North America as beasts of burden for prospectors. The burro is the long-eared equine that runs feral in many parts of the southwestern US. 

My sweet burro, Odelia. Note the white markings on the side of her neck. This is her BLM freeze brand, identifying her as having been adopted from feral BLM herds.

There are other types of donkeys. There are onagers, the wild asses of Asia (aka the Asiatic ass); mammoth jacks, which are large donkeys often used as bloodstock for mule-production or as riding donkeys; Sicilian donkeys from Italy, also known as miniature donkeys; the Baudet du Poitou, which is a fancy-sounding name for a type of donkey with a distinctive long coat; Corsican donkeys; and plenty of other donkeys, each with their own unique history and type. Donkeys are all equines, but they aren't horses. They have long ears, short manes, fairly straight backs, distinctive angles to their shoulders and hips, and tails that can't decide if they're long haired or short. 

A female donkey is referred to as a "jenny" and a male donkey is a "jack," (hence the name "jackass.") Now, if you take a jenny donkey and cross her with a male horse (stallion), do you get a mule? Nope. You get a hinny. It's a horse-donkey hybrid, and has plenty of the benefits of hybrid vigor, but it's not a mule, and in many ways it differs from a mule physically. A hinny is smaller than the mule equivalent would be, and sports the limbs and head of a horse and the body and torso of a donkey. It still has long ears and a generally mule-like appearance, but an experienced mulero will be able to tell the difference. 

Take a jackass, though, and cross him with a female horse (mare), and you'll get a mule. Its head and legs will look more donkey-like, but its body will favor the horse. Mules are generally preferred to hinnies, and are much more common (not only because of that preference, but because breeding a larger and more - ahem! - well-endowed stallion to a small jenny is not without risk to the jenny). Mules and hinnies, being hybrids, are rarely fertile, and (officially, at least) there have been documented (but exceedingly rare) cases of female mules producing foals but not of male mules fathering any. (This all doesn't preclude mules and hinnies from having the parts AND the inclination to breed unless neutered, but it does prevent them from being successful.)

Now, your female mule (and hinny, too) is referred to as a molly mule, and the male mule / hinny is a john mule. 

Jasper, of uncertain parentage. Although sold to me as a mule, based on his full mane and tail, the clean lines of his legs, his short neck and his facial features, I suspect him to be a hinny. Either way, Jasper's a john.

Often I’ll run across historical photos depicting mules that are mis-captioned as donkeys or burros, and similarly, uninformed writers will too often refer to mules as donkeys. If you are writing about one or the other, it behooves you (yes, I did that on purpose) to know the difference. For the record, the Democrat mascot is the donkey, not a mule, and sloppy PR and marketing people get the images confused. 

In addition to mules and hinnies, horses can be crossed with zebras to produce get called "zorses." Although they are interesting looking and tough, and *sometimes* trainable, they're often dangerous and challenging even for the most experienced mule trainer. They don't have the benefit of fully-domesticated parentage on both sides. If they are the product of a female horse and a male zebra, they will have the advantage of being raised by a domestic mother, who will pass on much of her general attitude about humans to the foal, whereas a zebra mother will pass on her own wild inclinations to the baby. 

A zebra can also be bred to a donkey, and the resulting foal will be - you guessed it - a zonkey. Calmer and more pragmatic than a zorse, they can still be a handful. Zebras themselves are notoriously cantankerous souls, even if raised in captivity, and if not handled consistently and regularly they can revert back to wild very easily. This time last year, tragically, a zebra in Ohio bit its owner's arm nearly completely off. They're quick to bite and quick to kick, and savage when they do either. Remember - these are the creatures that fight off lions and hyenas and other predators in their native lands. 

For comparison's sake, here's Julie, a horse. Compare ear length, tail, angle of hip and shoulder, brow prominence, legs, neck length, and arch of the crest. 

So there you have it: mollies and johns and hinnies and jennies and jacks and mules and more. 

Copyright (c) 2024 by Marcy J. Miller * All rights reserved * No part of this content, including photographs, may be copied or published without the express written permission of the author * Links to this page, however, may be freely shared * Thank you for linking, liking, sharing, emailing, and otherwise helping grow my readership, and most of all, thanks for stopping by!

What Horsemen Want Artists to Know About Horses

 

"Draw me like one of your French mules"

Since primitive men first scratched on the walls of caves, they’ve been inspired to draw and paint horses. These beautiful, spirited, useful beasts have occupied our creative inclinations ever since. Whether rendered in ink, paint, charcoal, marble, or wood, they graze in pastoral scenes, carry cowboys across western canvases, and ignite the dreams of little girls in children’s books. Walk into a “decorator outlet” and you’re sure to see huge paintings of horses, or just parts of them. Some are lovely. Some are perfectly appropriate for hanging on the wall behind the sofa. Some are downright scary.

Now, perhaps more than ever in the history of man-painting-horses, a lot of the artists producing horses have spent little time around them. The average urbanite might not notice the cowboy on a horse without a cinch to hold the saddle in place, or with a shanked bit and no curb strap, but your average horse person will immediately zone in on that little detail and be either amused, aghast, or annoyed. Some of us even take pictures of the offending piece and share them with our fellow horsey friends. I’m here to help you avoid being the target of our mockery.

Creative license is all well and good, but authenticity matters. Paint your horse blue and fuchsia, that’s creative license. Paint your horse with exaggerated features and ridiculously long manes and tails, and you’re the typical Arabian horse artist. Paint them blue, give them human eyes, and remove their leg joints and give them bodacious blue horse booty, and you might be Marc Chagall. But try to paint a realistic horse and put its eye on the front of its face, or give it a too-short back and too-long legs and a neck the length of a hamster’s, and you’re going to be in the “Point and Laugh” school of painting.

So, speaking here as a lifelong horsewoman, I want to share a few tips with you, my tenderfoot artist friends, that may help you out. Although I do dabble in watercolor and pencil, I’m neither a trained artist nor an art teacher; however, I’m confident in my knowledge of things horsey, and I share this in hopes it will be useful information to other dabblers. 

Study great horse illustrators. Some of my favorite artists as a child were breathtakingly skillful - and wonderfully authentic - illustrators. Take a look at the work of Wesley Dennis, Sam Savitt, Robert Lougheed. All of them illustrated books by Marguerite Henry, that gifted and versatile writer whose horse books so many of us grew up on. The illustrations were reliably correct in their depiction of horses, ponies, and donkeys. Another illustrator I loved, Ross Santee, is of an entirely different type. His pen and ink work was minimalistic, sparse, and yet so perfectly captured the horse or, perhaps more often, Indian pony - and he knew, and could convey, the difference. For detailed, exquisitely rendered authenticity, look at the simplest sketches or the most elaborate paintings of Frederic Remington. Arguably, no one can compete with his ability to capture type and form-to-function of the western horse. Look at the horses done by Olaf Wieghorst, Charles M. Russell, and Charlie Dye. I look back happily at my childhood memories of the thrill of seeing those perfectly-painted western horses. Wieghorst was, for a time, a mounted police officer (as I was) and his horses were among the most expressive of the western artists. 

Choose an appealing angle. My mother was an artist, though not a horsewoman, and in the few paintings she did with horses present, she handled them capably. One thing she told me when I was a child was “Horses aren’t attractive when painted directly head-on.” There are, of course, many exceptions, but overall it has proven true: it’s particularly difficult to attractively render a horse facing directly at the viewer. Tilt the head slightly, and you’ll get a much more attractive angle. Compositionally, they’re much more attractive from the side or at an angle. Challenge yourself, of course, but choose a pose that is attractive. 

Know the importance of Eadward Muybridge. Muybridge, a 19th century photographer, changed the way horses were portrayed in art. Look at early - say, revolutionary-era paintings of horses on the battlefield, and British sporting prints of horses and hounds - and you’ll see a couple of dominant poses. You’ll soon recognize the traditional galloping horse with front legs sprawling forward and rear legs sprawling just as far to the rear, or combat scenes with the hero on a horse that is balanced on one hind leg with both forelegs extended grandly above the battlefield. Horses don’t move that way. Muybridge was the first to debunk, as it were, the old myths of horse motion. In 1878 he completed a series of photographs of a racehorse in motion. The publication of those images was controversial; people were shocked to see that horses didn’t move as they’d always believed they did. For the first time, people understood gait and equine locomotion. Equestrian art would never be the same.

The impossibly leggy, impossibly posed, ubiquitous horse from British hunt scenes prior to Muybridge.

Know basic horse conformation. When horsemen assess horses, they look at the way the horse is put together. It’s an art and a skill. They develop an eye for good, straight legs that won’t break down under stress. They look at the height of the withers, and the angle of the shoulder, and the angle of the hip. All these things, and so many more, comprise conformation. If I could offer one helpful concept to the burgeoning equine artist, it’d be the concept of the trapezoid. Performance horsemen know the best horses have a good trapezoid: a long underline (the line between front and hind legs); a shorter top line (the line between the point of the shoulders and the upper point of the hip); and equal slope to the shoulder and hip. A third of the trapezoid will be in front of the girth line (armpit!); a third in the middle; and a third from the flank (rear armpit!) to the lower point of the butt. It’s best to look at the diagram here and start applying the trapezoid to horses you depict from the side. If you have a horse with a too-straight shoulder, it will be uncomfortable to ride and its front legs will often be set under its body too much. Now, you’re not going to ride the horse you paint, but a horseman will recognize the faults. Worse, if you depict a horse with a too-long back or a too-short hip, it will look off. You might find it easier to draw a horse by sketching out the trapezoid first, and then fleshing out the rest of it. Note: Mules and donkeys have significantly different conformation than horses, with different angles to the shoulder and hip.

A sample trapezoid showing its application to shoulder and hip lengths and angles.

Understand the vast variation in horses based on breed and type. Horses have been bred for hundreds of years to meet certain performance standards. Draft horses are bred to be powerful, large, and patient. Warmbloods - a type of horse with some blood and qualities from draft horse stock, and some blood and characteristics from “hot” blood horses of Arabian descent - were bred to be war horses, and now are largely bred to be capable sport horses. Light horses - from thoroughbreds to American Quarter Horses - are bred for just about every function. Within these three basic types are hundreds of breeds that are more specific in form and function. Then, of course, we can add in the ponies and donkeys and the lovable, utilitarian hybrids, the mules and hinnies. There’s a lot to know. If you’re painting a horse in a specific role or setting, know what type or breed you’re depicting. A Shetland pony, bred to work in the mines, might be appropriate wearing a harness and hauling coal. A showy Arabian or a Clydesdale or an Akhal-Teke? Not so much! A jockey in his brightly-colored silks is not going to be on a draft horse, but the outrider next to him leading his horse to the gate might be on an Appaloosa or a Quarter Horse or any calm, reliable, confident mount. A rider can certainly run barrels on an Arabian horse, but it’s not common in the more competitive events, and a bronc rider in a rodeo won’t be on one. You don’t have to be an expert, but you have to know what you are painting. Again, I refer you to Frederic Remington, or Guericault, or Wesley Dennis. When Wesley Dennis painted Misty of Chincoteague, you knew he was painting a pony with its short legs, longer coat, and shorter, heavier head than, say, a thoroughbred. 

Use negative space to your advantage. Art is about seeing, but often what we see is overridden by the pre-determined context we have in our head. I used to see this in witnesses to crime scenes. They’d sometimes mentally fill in the blanks based on past experience / perception rather than be an objective witness. Our minds just do that. If you show someone an inverted “V” instead of an “A” in, say, the word “RAT”, they’ll read it as an “A.” It’s a mental auto-correct function of sorts. Similarly, when we look at an image, our minds do these amazing acrobatics and yield things we don’t actually see. So, to circumvent and foil this process, learn to look at negative space - the space outside the image you’re actually drawing. Your mind’s eye might see a horse a certain way; but it may not be accurate. When looking at an actual horse or a photo reference of a horse, look at the lines outside and around the horse itself. You’ll be better able to capture the lines of the ears, or the legs, or the tail carriage. Pay particular attention to the shape of the negative space between the ears, the throatlatch (the narrow point the cuts in where the horse’s neck connects to the head), the shape between the horse’s legs. This will help you get the proportions and angles correct.

Note the guidelines I added between the ears, where the ears attach to the neck and face, under the chin (throatlatch), and where the neck meets the chest. These, like the legs, are areas where focusing on negative space will help you out.

Know something about tack. If you’re painting a horse under saddle, or in harness, or wearing a pack, either study a bit about tack or artistically obscure it, or you may end up failing much as AI currently does when depicting tack. Honestly, I’ve seen artists who have painted weirdly-attached reins or saddle strings capable of competing with even the weirdest AI renditions, and let’s not forget the ridiculous journalists who were outraged over the image of the Border Patrol rider whose reins were flying in the air because they interpreted it as a “whip” being used on illegal immigrants. I’ve seen paintings where artists stuck bits or brow bands on halters, or left off critical pieces of bridles, and lord, some of you people get creative with where reins are attached. Harnesses? They can be complicated even to the savviest horsemen, because like horses themselves, harnesses are built form-to-function. A driving horse might have a breast-collar type harness or one with a collar. A wheel horse in a six-horse team will have different rigging than the lead horses, and a single horse pulling a simple cart will be harnessed completely differently than half of a two-horse hitch. Use your photo references! Also: in general, riders hold the reins in their LEFT hand, people!

AI (this one courtesy of Bing) has gotten better in recent weeks, but this is an example of the hot mess that is still AI-generated tack. A non-horseman might think this is all copacetic, but it's not even close. AI also doesn't understand horse gaits. This horse is pacing (legs on each side moving in unison).

Understand horse condition. By this I mean know how a young horse differs from an old horse, and how a skinny, unhealthy horse looks different from one in peak show condition. If you want your horse to look tired, broken-down, or old, like Don Quixote’s Rosinante, give it a concave neck (the crest, meaning the topline of the neck - hence the word “crestfallen”); a depression above the eye; a lowered, dejected headset; swollen fetlocks and pasterns in the hind legs; lower lip jutting out; a swayed back; a dejected pose - such as standing with front legs slightly under, and resting one hind leg on its toe; lack of muscle definition; a low tail position; and a lackluster coat. To give your horse vitality and youth, show it with an arched neck (the degree varies based on breed); a high or moderately-high head; well-defined legs; sinewy, defined musculature; a high, proud, tail position; and a glossy coat. You can convey a certain amount of energy in your painted or sculpted horse by understanding the horse’s emotional state and condition. 

Finally, let’s look at everyone’s favorite subject: anatomical correctness. Stallions have balls and a penis. Geldings have no balls, but still have a penis.The latter is discreetly tucked into its sheath unless it’s in a state of arousal, or is peeing, or is doped up, or - in rare situations - is suffering a health disorder. This saves you, gentle artist, from having to depict Wilbur’s Johnson. However, you must often still depict Wilbur’s sheath if the horse is positioned thusly. Yes, you will have the inevitable adolescent viewer comment on it, but a gelding or a stallion will have a visible sheath. It is shaped something like a somewhat rounded square-root symbol, or an inverted asymmetrical mound. Mares, which are female horses, have two teats, but unless they are about to give birth or are nursing their foal, these will not be visible from the side. So if you are squeamish about making your horses anatomically correct, you can always choose to paint mares. 

The sheath in all its glory. Do not fear the sheath. 

So there you have it: a few things I wish more artists would understand about horses. This is much longer than I’d intended, and could perhaps end up being a booklet or book, but may it help you in your quest to paint, or sculpt, or otherwise depict a lovely, lifelike horse. Reach out to me if you have a specific question about this content. (No, I will not evaluate your own artistic efforts!)

For further reading:

Reference book on horse anatomy (affiliate link)

Copyright (c) 2024 by Marcy J. Miller * All rights reserved * No part of this content, including pictures, may be used without the written permission of the author * Links to this post, however, may be freely shared, and are appreciated * Thank you for linking, liking, sharing, and otherwise helping grow my readership * Most of all, thank you for stopping by!