Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 1, 1993                   TAG: 9312010199
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: PULASKI                                LENGTH: Short

TEEN-AGE GIRL FOUND GUILTY OF STEALING SPOTTED HORSE

The girl will be sentenced in January.

Bud White of Dublin discovered his black-and-white spotted Tennessee walking horse missing Sept. 26 from his barn on Giles Avenue.

He reported the missing horse, valued at $20,000, to the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office.

White found his horse, Fine Arts Classic Touch, about 24 hours later, running loose about a mile away on Black Hollow Road.

But someone had dyed the horse's coat and mane black.

White was upset by what others might regard as a harmless prank.

The 3-year-old breeding stallion pulled some muscles when left to run on a cornfield's soft ground.

That, along with White's concerns over any negative effect of the dye, led him to cancel breeding sessions he had scheduled for the rest of the year.

Classic Touch is a registered horse and is listed in a national breeding guide, he said.

"Its coloring is its claim to fame," White said in September. Spotted Tennessee walking horses are unusual, he said.

Joyce White, Bud White's wife, said Tuesday that the horse still has splotches of black where they shouldn't be.

Even the white mane - which doesn't shed and regenerate - was dyed. Classic Touch's leg still swells up from a pulled muscle, she said.

"He looks like hell. He's a shell of himself," she said.

The horse is under the care of a veterinarian, who said the horse has been traumatized, Joyce White said.