yet another color genetics question

[Little Bo Boop]

 

OK, so what color would you guys call this dog (Calli's sire)?

 

 

 

I would call that a saddleback tri (or sable for you hard cores LOL) looks like a workin' kinda dude ;-)

[Ooky]

I understand the sable, tan or yellow hair with black tips, just like the paint brush ;-) It just seems to me though, that just because she has a patch or two of sable on her head, well it wouldn't make her a sable colored dog? I mean if you were describing her without a pic, and said she was a heavily ticked sable, I don't see where that would give you an accurate idea of what she was and/or looked like. I guess I'm thinking more along the lines of say a seal point siamese? Or is that all totally apples and oranges? And please, I'm not trying to be pissy or argumentative ;-) just questioning and curious ;-)

 

 

Siamese is totally different - it is an environmentally controlled color expression gene. It basically codes, entirely separate from color, for a white/off-white coat. Wherever the skin is coolest, the color then is deposited. This is why baby siamese have almost no color - they are super warm all over. Then, naturally, as the cat ages, circulation changes and the extremeties - nose, ears, feet, and tail start to express color. This is why siamese look most striking when they are younger, because they still have very efficient circulation. As they age, the extremeties (and everything else) get less blood flow. Eventually, they start coloring in on the back and stuff too.

 

If you strap a cold pack to a young Siamese (changing it out every 8 hours so it stays cold), you will get a very dark "point" in the shape of the cold pack. I don't really know, but it doesn't seem mottling works that way in dogs? In any case, they both sound epistatic - meaning a gene that affects the expression of some other gene.

 

"Seal" is black further affected by "himalaylan" banding genes - appears brown.

[Little Bo Boop]

Dracina your pup is a sable - the lovely all over version. What a heart throb of a pup!

 

LBP - I don't know cat color genes, so i can't answer that part. Sable is all over, you just have more black or more yellow depend on the role of the genetic dice. White covers all color - so that answer thats. Then you have another pattern - the blue mottling (which may be roaning in horses - I dunno...this is a thought provoking discussion) - on top of that.

 

The rat breeder/Border Collie owner that I was referencing look at you Stella's pics and though she was a slate blue (dilute) sable merle. How's that to throw a wrench in our ideas? I think she's wrong on the merle, which would make her a slate blue sable roan, but if you didn't know her parantage I suppose you could think that.

 

Has anyone's head exploded yet?

 

 

I'm pretty sure she's not a merle, as she was born white? Aren't merles born merle? dohp! and she uses that sable word too! ;-)

 

Here are sable dogs, no real info on them though, or what consititutes sable. http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Perm...ColorSable.html

 

and here are Saddleback dogs. http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Perm...olorSaddle.html

 

 

Here is a bit about Ticking from the BC museum site.

 

On ticking, Dr. Philip Sponenberg of the Virginia-Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine, in an article on ticking that first appeared in part in the Shepherd's Dogge, Vol. II, No. 4, Winter 1989/90. says:

 

Speckled dogs may be complicated. Most are probably [the result of] ticking, which is a dominant gene that tends to put tiny spots into the white spotted area of a white spotted dog. This does indeed happen at some weeks to perhaps months after birth...The ticking varies from a little to a lot, and in dogs with just a little would probably be missed altogether...

 

It seems to me that most dogs should be fairly consistently ticked wherever they have white markings. That is, if it is just a light sprinkling it should be so everywhere, if intense and dark it should be so everywhere [but this isn't necessarily so]. So, the ones with more ticking on the legs and head are interesting, but might still be [genetically] ticked. There are records of some blue ticked dogs that had intense ticking but then also white spots free of ticking. If this is the case then perhaps there are two types of white spotting going on, one being subject to invasion by the ticking and the other resistant to it. This is a hypothesis, and if dogs are found like this, [the theory] needs to be tested.

 

The ticking grows in the color that...is the background color, so can be black ([which] looks blue blue roan if intense), red, tan, blue (dilute) or anything else. White speckles in dark spots would be entirely different [genetically, and]...the ticking is [also] not relatedto merle at all.

 

Linda Rorem explains it simply:

 

Speckling will be whatever the underlying pattern would be, were there no white there (sort of [as if] a white stocking with a lot of little holes in it was pulled on over a tanpoint or sable leg or black leg). Same with the collar or any other white area, and the face; on a tanpoint (tricolor), the speckling will be tan where tan would be located in a tanpoint face, black where the black would be located.

Many people mistake ticking for merling, and I can't begin to count the number of people that sent me photos of their "blue merle" dog, only to find out that they really had a ticked dog. Especially with heavy ticking, it is a natural mistake for people who have had no experience with either merles or ticked dogs

[Stoga]

Saddleback sable

 

Calli too?

 

 

Thanks for the informative discussion!

[Little Bo Boop]

Calli too?

 

 

Thanks for the informative discussion!

 

 

Wow, your dog looks a lot like Stella's brother Bill. Kind of hard to tell from the pic. but Bills a tri too...they've got those same radar ears ;-) How is your dog bred?

 

[SoloRiver]

OK, so if you want weird, Fly is a totally garden variety black and white dog -- but she has WHITE ticking on her ears. That's right, not black ticking on her white parts, but white ticking on black parts. And it's only on her ears. It looks like she got snowed on.

[Stoga]

Wow, your dog looks a lot like Stella's brother Bill. Kind of hard to tell from the pic. but Bills a tri too...they've got those same radar ears ;-) How is your dog bred?

 

They sure do look alike. Cal and her sister (Jan's Juno) are out of mostly southern California working ranch dogs. Anna (stockdogranch) found her for me. As Anna would say, "decently bred," but probably nothing recognizable beyond that general area. More than dog enough for me...

[dracina]

Betty, what color do you call Stella? I might have missed it on the other thread?

 

Karrin

[PSmitty]

Poor Alex. I attacked him when I got home to check out the poor guy's hair, just to make sure what I said earlier was how I remembered. The only hair that is all one color is his white. The parts of him that look look mostly black are really black tipped on top of cream or tan. Some spots, like the area on his upper shoulder, those tan hairs are black/tan/black, with just the teenest bit of black tip, so it looks mostly tan.

 

Cali & Bill=

[Journey]

I still say Stella is a dilute blue (which is a dilute of the black gene) and the sable is dominant over the black gene, however, white covers all - meaning no color. Roan, like Merle, is a pattern. It may be that roaning/mottled is the same gene modifier? So expression on Stella is Blue Sable Roan.

 

Betty, got any pictures of Stella sire?

 

 

 

eta - Betty, just how did you register Stella color wise?

[Journey]

I would call that a saddleback tri (or sable for you hard cores LOL) looks like a workin' kinda dude ;-)

 

Saddleback Sable

[Little Bo Boop]

I still say Stella is a dilute blue (which is a dilute of the black gene) and the sable is dominant over the black gene, however, white covers all - meaning no color. Roan, like Merle, is a pattern. It may be that roaning/mottled is the same gene modifier? So expression on Stella is Blue Sable Roan.

 

Betty, got any pictures of Stella sire?

eta - Betty, just how did you register Stella color wise?

 

 

Her breeder reg. her of course, at the time she was white, with gray ears, ticking, black over one eye and two blue eyes...thats what's on her papers.

 

This is her sire, Tyne (by Emils Ben). As you can see Bill looks a lot like pop. There is another brother, Jack, and he looks a lot like them as well, but he was almost all bald faced, to include his ears, I think he has a couple of white spots on his ears, but other than that he looks a lot like Bill.

 

Tyne.

[Little Bo Boop]

Poor Alex. I attacked him when I got home to check out the poor guy's hair, just to make sure what I said earlier was how I remembered. The only hair that is all one color is his white. The parts of him that look look mostly black are really black tipped on top of cream or tan. Some spots, like the area on his upper shoulder, those tan hairs are black/tan/black, with just the teenest bit of black tip, so it looks mostly tan.

 

Cali & Bill=

 

 

LOL I know, I was going to pull hairs on Stell and Bill, looking for sable ;-) poor kids.

[theshine]

OK, so if you want weird, Fly is a totally garden variety black and white dog -- but she has WHITE ticking on her ears. That's right, not black ticking on her white parts, but white ticking on black parts. And it's only on her ears. It looks like she got snowed on.

 

Do you have a pic? That sounds like she could be a cryptic merle...an acquaintance of mine has a dog colored like that, looks traditional bl/wht but with some white dotting on one ear. She bred her to a blue merle and that's how she found out the spots were merling...double merle puppies. She looked into it after the pups were born and turns out her bitch's mom is colored the same way, just the dots on the ear like reverse ticking. The whole time she thought she had a bl/white bitch from bl/wht parents. A couple of the puppies are cryptic merles as well.

[Maralynn]

I've always refered to Kipp as a B/W tri with brindle. His coloring is much the same as Lark's except instead of just tan, it's brindle coloring. His undercoat is all tan, and the roots of his black hair are mostly light colored as well. So would that make him a sable?

 

Here is a link to some pictures of Kipp

 

And I think Stella and family are some pretty cool looking dogs!

[Sue R]

Then there's Celt, who's black and white and also white-factored. He's got grizzling on his face and people are always asking, "How old is that dog?" The grizzling started to show up on his pure black areas of face (around eyes and on cheeks) when he was two years old.

 

Sounds like color is not a very simple matter, even though it doesn't matter at all really...

[juliepoudrier]

Wendy,

Are the genetics behind what you're calling "blue mottle" the same as what I would call roan? If I had to describe Stella or any other dogs similar to her (including perhaps ACDs), the first color description that comes to mind is roan, but then maybe that's just my horse background coming through.

 

I don't have a microscope to look at Larky's hairs with. I think people would look at me funny if I called her sable (and you know that I worry excessively about what others think, lol!).

 

Oh, and another question, how does the idea that most border collies may be sable vs. black and white square with the research I posted on the other thread that indicated that border collies have a dominant black gene?

 

J.

[Lenajo]

I think, per this discussion and the reading it has generated, that roan and mottle are the same thing. Both are color patterns, not the color itself. Ticking may also be the same gene - just another pattern.

 

You know you are petrified to tell people you think Lark is sable...na na na

 

Karen (journey) and I were talking about the black vs sable thing last night. We've decided the black gene is recessive to the sable (agouti) one. This is based on where you breed a true black to another one you don't get anything else as far as we know. But if you breed a sable to a sable, you can get black - so it must be recessive.

 

The final on Stella appears to be a slate (dilute blue), roaned, white marked (probably Sp - piebald), sable

 

 

 

Wendy,

Are the genetics behind what you're calling "blue mottle" the same as what I would call roan? If I had to describe Stella or any other dogs similar to her (including perhaps ACDs), the first color description that comes to mind is roan, but then maybe that's just my horse background coming through.

 

I don't have a microscope to look at Larky's hairs with. I think people would look at me funny if I called her sable (and you know that I worry excessively about what others think, lol!).

 

Oh, and another question, how does the idea that most border collies may be sable vs. black and white square with the research I posted on the other thread that indicated that border collies have a dominant black gene?

 

J.