Genetics confusion? - Page 2

Maybe this will explain it better than I can. http://www.arlett.de/sables/index.html

Remember Vienchen Arlett is also Iceman's dam.

From vom Arlett's site it appears that one really cannot tell with this one unless you have a baby picture?  my bitch in my avatar is a blk/red although she looks a lot (color wise) like this bitch.  She was definalty a blk/red as a pup, the large bitch stripe showed up at 1 year old and has a large amout of red in it.

I always beleived sable=light at the roots/dark at the ends for the hair and that defined a sable?  I would recognize "wolf types" as a sable easily, but with that sadle??

 

Vienchen is/was a sable female. For anybody who does not want to believe it, please contact Margit van Dorssen for confirmation. She was never a black and red, even as a puppy, lol lol.

And if you still don't believe it: Her breed survey from August 8, 1998 in Trier, Germany by judge Hubert Thielen calls her a sable (grau, braun gewolkt).
And Vienchen, of course received her sable pigment from her sire V-Jock von Arlett, who in turn received his from V-Soffie von Arlett.

She looks like a B 7 R  to me, not a patterned sable at all.   
Baldursmom is, I believe, correct:  sometimes you can't tell what it  is, unless you see the puppy pics to know what it was.   I have a male that is a patterned sable, and he could be taken for B/T, but we know he started out life as a brown furball with a skunk stripe down his back and a ring around his tail that spread.    Rather like the showline pups who start out looking like  B & T near bi-colors and turn into saddle-marked B & R.   Odd how that happens!    With both, you don't really know what you are going to end up with for a couple of years.

Baldursmom - you are right that sable or agouti is expressed through tipping of the hair. Some dogs have very long tipping, some very short.  Silbersee's argument notwithstanding, I am not someone who "wants" to deny her sable genes -- in fact, it would make this story logical, which I do like.  The problem is that in this picture of Vienchen she sure looks B/T.  I would think it is more likely that this picture is not really Vienchen (if she is definitely sable) than it is that this dog is a sable genetically.

Obviously, the intimation is that somebody switched a dog in the breeding -- but that would never be the dam!  So I don't think anyone is suggesting that this famous kennel fooled around. 

But if this dog in this pic is a sable, I'm surprised.

 

Its the photo on the Arlett web site.  There is also the illustrated GSD standard link that was posted a few days ago that shows a "faded" sable and explains that they look a lot like a B/R or B/T sadle and are dificult as adults to tell apart.
Considering what Doressen has done with her lines, I am not one to question it at all.

You can tell a sable in person, especially if you run your fingers through the coat, but in photos, some sables will be harder to distinguish than others.

Black and tan patterned dogs will always gain more tan (red/brown) as they age, even into old age.

Bi-colors have a distinct pattern that doesn't vary signifcantly, except as the coat is shed and regrown.

Sables are always sable, but their appearance can vary a lot between seasons of the year, with a lot of undercoat for the winter, or when they are shedding or re-growing their coats. They are usually born very dark, lighten as they get their puppy coat in, and then start darkening again as their adult top coat grows in. They may vary in lightness/darkness--but they will always be sable.

I "lost" a puppy sale recently because the buyer was worried that one of my bicolor or black/tan pups might grow up to be sable. After trying futilely to explain to this fellow that it just wasn't so, that it didn't happen that way, I finally told the guy to find another breeder who he trusted more. (And then I breathed a sigh of relief.)

Christine
http://www.blackthornkennel.com

This link shows a progression from a sable pup to a dog that looks much like the dog in the picture, so the puppy characteristic is very important to ID'ing these type of sables.  I wonder if this is an indication of incomplete penetrance of the sable over the sadle back?

http://www.4gsd.net/colours.html

See a similar discussion on the Leroy Brown thread.

Hexe you have it just backwards.  Sable is a color specifically defined by the presence of agouti hair. Saddle markings are a pattern not a color. The color we normal recognize with the saddle pattern is B/T but it can occur with sables as well.  Again see the Leroy Brown thread re an American bitch  who appears to be a faded B/T saddle but is a sable carrying the recessive for B/T from one parent. She is a saddle patterned sable. 

This is a previous thread on patterned sables  http://www.pedigreedatabase.com/gsd/bulletins_read/253088.html. This thread refers readers to Linda Shaw's page http://www.shawlein.com/The_Standard/07_Colour_&_Pigment/Colour_&_Pigment.html and while she does have drawings of three types of sables she does not show what I call a wolf gray sable where the grey extends to the entire leg and the feet.  This I believe is the homogenous sable where the others are usually not carrying another color from one parent.

As noted above and as I noted on the Leroy thread by age 5 or 6 these patterned sables and faded B/Ts can often be impossible to tell exactly what they are unless you know what they were as puppies.  That defines the color.