Panda Shepherd - Page 4

Hey, is it just ME who sees these GSDs markings looking similar to  Scottish/English Import working/herding line BORDER COLLIES?  White blaze in middle of head, white blazed chests, white up a portion of the front legs (varies), little bit on the back feet, "lantern" white mark on the tail tip?! The pics GSDXypher posted looks exactly like a blk/white border collie in a German shepherd body.

I'm not meaning that I think these pups produced are not pure-bred because I believe they are pure-bred, but gosh-the markings are very similar to the blk/white and blk/white/tan tri-colored herding cousin to the GSD, the Border Collie! I professionally whelped my first litter of Border Collies for a good friend late December 2008, so I got to watch a beautiful litter of import lined pups be born and grow. They were blk/white and blk/white/tan tris-just like some of these pups pics I'm seeing on this subject matter.

http://www.hoobly.com/0/0/795206.html Nothing to to with original Panda breeder, tho.

Shall we create a monopoly on a new breed and call them Border Shepherds?!

Thank you everybody,
I will keep you posted through the coming weeks on whether the white fades or not
The pedigree of the puppy is almost an outcross with 1 common thread the 4X VA1 USA & Canada which is in the 3rd generation on the dams side & 4th generation on the sires side

THANK YOU for such an unexpected howbeit greatly appreciated compliment, CrysBuck-she's a show/working controversially bred bitch, my darling Buszke (Beska). She's photogenic. http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/pedigree/532420.html   VA2 blk/red show sire(2x VA1 Larus Batu son), V4 multi-working titled solid black dam. Currently 17 mos old, 26" tall, 70lbs. And she's very impressive!  You're not the first one to notice. I took that pic for my avatar out in our front yard this past October. Nothing "Panda" about her, tho!! 

 <--When she was 5 mos old

ANYHOW...yes, I've never heard anyone myself come right out and say, "Hey, that looks like a Border Collie", but after seeing quite a few pics of this rather peculiar crop-up over the past decade, I have to say, I see alot of similarities between this pattern of GSD and a BC. 

Breed standard calls for breeding dogs to be rich in pigment and doesn't necessarily favor excessive white marking, but other than that, if the dog is nice, intelligent , healthy and solid tempered, I see no major issue with such.  

I am of the belief that anything used in creating our breed (both good and bad) is in the foundation genetics of our breed and carried by each GSD produced.

So, even tho many years later the breed has evolved into distinctively different farctions that are noticeable today, the genetics of each and every dog carry an exhaustive possibility of genetic combinations, some stemming from the birth of the breed.

Thus, when two dogs are paired up, in the miracle of conception, a puppy can inherit genes as 'new' as from the parents/grandparents like usually expected, or as ancient as the foundation of the dog's creation. How else can we explain such unexpected crop-ups that happen from time to time in an otherwise normal litter that has NOT been polluted (is true to the breeding-no contamination bya 2nd male of different breed origin), but aren't rare enough to consider it an absolute spontaneous mutation? I do not feel it should be considered "rare" for people to produce blk/tan GSDs with excessive white on the chest, nose, tail tip and some on feet/legs(Border Collie pattern/markings). It's being seen more in this past decade than I can ever remember, but that could be because people generally love something different. The blue-eyed thing might be more of a mutation; someone on here on this pedigree database has a working sable female pup I believe offered for sale with blue eyes. Blue eyes crop up a bit in blue merles in Border Collies, by the way, also, but not typically seen in blk/whites, tris, red merles, and so forth. So again...are these things traits that show an ancient relation to that other herding breed, the Border Collie and the GSD?

You can watch on www.hoobly.com and see people offering these same-marked  "panda" shepherds from time to time from Ohio, Indiana, and other states, but aren't necessarily related to one another or the "originator" of the "panda shepherd" name. I just think breeders in the past took such occurrance a bit harsher and either culled such-marked pups OR sold/gave them away without papers so there'd be no documented trace of them.
Just my 2 cents. lol.

I'm not sure, Sunsilver. But we know its there, and we can definitely see a relation between the two 'cousin' herding breeds, the GSD and BC. Oh, and Frankie was a bitch, not a dog, so she did have pups-seems she would produce mostly affected pups with maybe a few normal pups. I only saw one pic of one litter and it had only 1 male blk/tan unaffected pup-the rest had her coloration but brown eyes.

Maybe its a fluke for it to crop up (Frankie's father is a blk/tan with alot of black Schh3 working male w/ no white that I recall on his chest or toe tips, mother is solid black-its not remotely predictable to expect such a dog as Frankie to be produced from such), but if such is then used FOR breeding, it becomes potential to be produced dominant?  The blue eye aspect was definitely not a dominant thing or else Frankie would've also had blue eyed pups like herself along with the excessive white border collie markings. She never reproduced her blue eyes in progeny or grandprogeny. BUT, blue eyes HAVE cropped up spontaneously in GSDs.
If such coat coloring is indeed dominant, why isn't it seen cropping up more often? And, where's it coming from? Has to be from loooong ago, before anything shown in the registries or else we'd already have documented case/proof of it.

It doesn't seem this is affected by German-only or American-only bred dogs, either. I've seen both involved in producing such, including Frankie (she's  a combo of German/American breeding).

So, with that said, at some point does the white markings become a dominant thing more like the white gene for chest/toe tip markings, but the blue eyes stay a spontaneous mutated thing? Or, did by chance in this one instance the blue eyes ride along with the other border collie markings when Frankie was conceived? It's an interesting thought.