color of pup?? - Page 5

VM,
I just wanted to say that I asked my breeder of Indi about the bi coloring with the gray undercoat... Since hers started bleeding through to the top coat...He said yes, still a bi color... Here is an example of what she look like now...
Stacy

She looks like she's shedding pretty strongly--and once that undercoat blows out, she should go back to looking solid colored in her black areas again.

Christine

Thanks Christine,
I appreciate the comment :-) I thought at first she was changing her puppy coat...
She actually is hardly losing any hair.. Breeder said he sees it in a few of the sire's offspring occasionally.
Oh and she's a bit dusty lol..

Stacy

VR, Yeah, Bella's darker than that, but since Bi-color is a separate gene, I wanted to make sure I had it right. Blackthorn, yours is even blacker than Bella!

And Indi looks great, even with the perpetual Dead Animal in her mouth! 

The dog in my icon stays black when he blows his coat. But his half-sister Hunter blows grey undercoat on her neck and thighs. Her body undercoat seems to stay dark. And, when she's really blowing coat, she practically turns blue with this dusty look to her coat. But once she grows her hair back in and gets rinsed off (like I take her swimming, say), she goes right back to her glossy black coat.

She's actually just getting ready to blow her coat in this picture from a couple of years ago, and you can see the light undercoat around her neck and thighs. It kinda makes me think that the bicolor is more a melanistic gene that overlays the b/t pattern, but when you combine it with a black recessive, it makes for a a more "solid" overlay. I think Hunter is a bicolor with no black recessive. Coal (dog in my icon) is bicolor with a black recessive.

It's pretty conclusive now that saddle and bicolour are one and the same on the Agouti locus ie, there is one 'gene'  - a^t   that produces black & tan pattern, from the lightest saddle, including all variations, through to darkest bicolour.  Modifying genes, yet to be identified, account for the wide variation, including the light under shading on the dog above.  This occus in Rottweilers too; a breed of typical bicolour pattern.

The paper on the DNA research for the A locus is due to be published in the next couple of months.

you all are great. thank you so much for the advise. I contacted the breeder and she is sending me some updated pictures today. The puppy will be 4 weeks old. thanks again for all your help. Also she is sending me pictures of his litter mates

pod,
which study is it that you are referring to? Color patterns are very fascinating to me. I know that "a-t" is the black and tan pattern and that modifiers are responsible for the degree of shading but it was never clear to me if bi-color is a different gene or not. The SV does not differentiate but the AKC does in their description. Most of the information I have is from Malcolm Willis and he is not sure about that subject either.
As to the undercoat getting lighter (more grayish or so) before it comes out, it could also be due to it being dead hair. Even my solid black dogs look mahogany colored or brownish before and during shedding. Also, there is a sun bleaching factor as well. Age plays are role too.

Hi Silbersee.  This info has come from Sheila Schmutz's lab that's involved in the ongoing colour research in Canada (personal communication).

Back in the 50s Clarence Little was first to group bicolour, saddle and all the tanpoint variations together as one A locus allele, and it seems now he was correct.  I have spoken with Malcolm Willis about this on several occasions over the years and he does now agree that Little was correct.