Show me your Melanistic Blanket GSD - Page 8

Mine are AKC registered, & none of the owners that have them now are going to breed them, so I guess it really doesn't matter much...it's not like they'll ever meet a breed warden, & having been neutered.....as long as they are loved & well cared for I am content. And it's going to be quite a while before I have anymore pups around here. *sigh* So, I am learning, learning....& I love to see everyone's pictures. Of you experienced breeders, has anyone ever been completely surprised by the color a pup grew up to be? jackie harris

VM says "If Bella is bi, and her parents are BT and sable, she would in fact have to be BT because bi is recessive to BT... Is that correct? "

Her BT parent may carry a black recessive, and her sable parent may carry bi-color recessive. (or they could both carry recessive bicolor).
She gets one gene from each, so maybe she inherits the bicolor and the black. Bi is dominant over black so she is a bicolor.

---Mary

OK, now we're getting someplace. I have figured out that if Bella is bi, she MUST carry the black recessive, because black is the only factor in the lines that's recessive to bi. Either that or she is bi/bi, but I can't see how that would work in the square. There isn't a combination for that.

Father: B&T, bi
Mother: S, black

In a square that gives you S,B&T; S,bi; B&T, black; and bi,black. So Bella has to be the last one if her phenotype is bi, right?

Then:
Ignite, S,B&T
Bella, bi, black

In a square the puppies are S,bi; S, black; B&T, bi; and B&T,black.

This might explain why my sable puppies are so black on the undersides, no? They are all recessive for black or bi.


 

Oh wait, that still doesn't account for 3 bi puppies. Sigh.

OK. I now believe there's no damn difference between a bi-color, blanket back, and melanistic b&t. Same thing, different degree. They register them both as b&t in both Germany and Czechland, so what the hell. We are clutching at straws. 

U or V = light or dark sable
I = black & tan
X = melanistic black & tan (blanket back, etc.) OR bicolor
Y = black

VomMarischal, you're right--these distinctions are of interest if you want to know/guess the genotype (what genes the dog carries) and the best descriptive name of the color of your dog. They are not registered with such distinctions and matter mostly just for purposes of curiosity. At any rate, here's some more examples for you. :)

Melanistic black and tan--could be a black and tan with the bicolor recessive, such as Nike:



Or a black and tan with a black recessive (note the tan on her ears and top of her head and that the black doesn't go all the way down her legs, also the tan on the front of her thighs, also no tarheels or toemarks--pictured at 22 months--she did have toemarks until she was about 8 months old):



I have also seen black and tans with black recessives who have a standard saddle pattern (although the black saddle is usually very solid black in this case), so you do not always get a "blanket" saddle.

Nike was bred to a sable dog who was sable/black, out of those litters she had puppies that were:

dark red sable (sable/bicolor recessive)
red sable (sable/bt recessive)
bicolor (bicolor, black recessive)
melanistic black/tan (black/tan with black recessive)

I bred Nike to another dog who was bicolor/black-- no black recessive. From those litters, I had puppies who were Nike's color (bt/bicolor), bicolor with black recessive (melanistic bicolor), and bicolor/bicolor (no black recessive), such as Hunter (note the tarheels; she also has toemarks, which you can't see in this picture:



This picture is Hunter (note her tan eyebrows, tan "necklace," and tan on her chest) and Coal, a bicolor/black recessive out of a sable/black male:



Christine

Nice pictures, Christine. But I know what the color variations LOOK like; I was just trying to figure out where the bi-color puppies in my litter harken back to, given that a couple genetics sites insist that bi-color is a separate gene. Now I just think the whole litter is melanistic....bi, b&t, and sable, all of them have a lot of black--because their grandfather is solid black, I guess. There isn't a regular b&t in my pedigree for like 10 generations. I think my sables are going to grow up to be nearly black, too, with a red undercoat. Did you see that black belly above? funny little girl, that one. Raccoon eyes and all, though I've never seen it in any of my lines before. Oh well, dang Bella got really creative, I guess!

YogieBear, I do not think so.  Just bi or black and tan. I think that's why everybody fusses over the distinction...so you can figure out how the heck to register them...although I don't think the distinction makes a lick of difference in the real world. Genetically speaking. In fact, I think it may be detrimental to think of them that way. We should be trying to get lots of melanin (because fading pigment is a bad thing for many reasons), and not relying on tags. Just more pigment, more pigment, more pigment, because I think working temperament is beginning to be a color linked trait after all the years of breeding for certain things. Humans and their obsession with style have created this--sure looks like it on the training field. Not very many bleached-out sables or regular saddlebacks are excelling, right? Gross generalization, of course, of course, because various genes will pop up forever, which we know to be true because we still have CHD even if we haven't seen it in our lines for many generations. 

And I think this is why I feel that livers and blues are a problem. Maybe it's possible that the dilute factor dilutes more than just pigment. But not blacks and whites, which seem to have a masking gene but real color underneath.

Please let's not turn this into a discussion of fantastic dilute factor dogs because it's not the point. I'm just on vacation and have puppies so I can't go anywhere! So I thought I'd go on a quest to figure out how I got bi-color puppies! I'm pretty sure that the answer is...they are just black and tan, or varying degrees of melanistic black and tan.

Christine, I hope the b&t in my avatar comes out looking like that first girl (?) in your pix. 

The first dog is Nike (Ike vom Del U Haus, Sch2, KK2). She's the mom of the other 3 dogs I showed there (and mom to about 11 working SAR dogs!). She's 11 now, so nowadays, she's quite the cuddlebug and is happiest when she's snuggled between 2 people on the sofa with a ball tucked under her chin. :)

Here she is from this winter: