Sabino (pronounced: sah BEE no), is a genetic color pattern.  It is often characterized by four white feet and legs where the stockings often extend up the legs in ragged formation past the knee or hock, leg white that is disconnected from any socks, belly patches that extend to the body, body roaning and a wide blaze with white on the lower lip, chin and throatlatch.     

When the sabino pattern is minimally expressed, the horse usually has four white socks and a blaze, but  you can tell they are not the usual white marks because of the ragged edge or narrow and long extension up the leg.  Some sabinos will also have odd white patches on the knee or hock, removed from the main portion of the sock or stocking.  A few sabinos do have a dark foot or two, or particolor hooves, although most have four white feet.  Minimally marked sabinos are easily confused with truly nonspotted horses.   

When the sabino pattern is in the moderate range of expression, they are fairly distinctive and are usually difficult to confuse with other patterns.  Most have white extending from the belly and have roaned and flecked areas in addition to white spots or patches.  This roaning pattern, called rabicano (pronounced: rab i CA no), can also be present without accompanying white patches.  Most rabicanos also have white in the mane and tail.  These could be confused with the true roan horses, although the facial and leg white usually gives these away and they do not have dark heads typical of true roans.  The gene for a true roan does not exist in the Arabian breed.  

The next stage of expression is patched but not roaned.  These maximum sabinos can be confused with frame overos especially if they have at least one dark foot.  Most patched sabinos have smaller, more ragged patches than typical frame overos.  

The whitest of sabinos are almost all white and may retain color only on the ears while others are all white.  These are known as extreme sabinos.

The sabino has not been associated with the Lethal White foals that frame overos can have; therefore it is considered safe to breed one sabino to another.

The silver dapple gene is found in many breeds throughout the world.  The silver dapple colors are becoming more popular in many breeds of gaited horses.  These colors also occur in a wide variety of pony, saddle, warmblood and draft breeds in Europe.  The silver dapple gene is also present, although very rare, in the Arabian horse.  This gene acts upon the base color of the horse, creating a wide range of uncommon colors, including red silver.

Red silvers generally have a clear bay body color, but the points are diluted with varying degrees of black in them.  When the points are extremely diluted, red silver can be confused with flaxen chestnut, but is completely separate in terms of genetic makeup.  Red silvers are sometimes very subtle, and in these cases, are often misclassified as bay.  The intensity of the body color of red silvers is similar to bays or chestnuts, and they frequently combine characteristics of both.  Because the base body color is bay, red silvers will test out genetically as bay.

If you have an Arabian that appears to be a flaxen chestnut, the only way to be sure is to have the horse genetically tested for color.  A horse that appears to be a chestnut, but tests as a genetic bay, carries the silver dapple gene.  We suspect that, like sabino, the silver dapple may present on more than one gene.  Because of this, your test may come back negative for the silver dapple gene, but your horse may display all the traits of this gene.  These genetic tests are available through the UC Davis Veterinary Genetics Laboratory.  See our links page for a link to this website.

The above explanation of silver dapple/red silver is taken from the book "Equine Color Genetics" by Dr. D. Phillip Sponenberg, DVM, PhD.