Update on Shelby - Page 1

Hey everybody :-)

Well, Shelby is now a few days over 4 months old, so I thought I'd share on her progress.

We are now in her 5th week of puppy school and training. She's doing beautifully with leave it, heel, wait, sit, down, stand, come, and reacts normally to her name (unless there's a bird outside :-P). She's starting to understand 'away' and 'stay,' and those continue to be ongoing projects.  Her barking/other vocalizations have generally reduced in frequency, and she now 1. mostly whines when she needs to go outside to potty, 2. barks if I didn't notice the whine and her urges are becoming.. well.. more urgent, 3. if she's really frightened or something, 4. if she's wrestling with another puppy, and rarely 5. when she is walking and another dog walks by. She used to bark all the time when she saw another dog, but it's mostly if the dog passes by closely and we don't let her interact with it. When she's quiet, and we have permission, then we let her meet and greet. This has been working well, and we're continually working on it.

About 2 weeks ago, I noticed that her coat was changing dramatically, with white hairs shooting up all over the place. Well, I've come to find out (after reading a lot about it) that she's a sable! Her individual hairs that grew out of being white are now a deep golden color with black tips, and she's developed more white hairs along the top of her back, side of her face, and more extending from her elbows all the way up and behind to her whithers. She used to have what I thought was going to be a black blanket, with her shoulders, whithers, really everything except for her legs, chest, and head, was going to be completely black (her face has a lot of black, but has some gold and red markings). So yeah, I'm super pumped at the prospect of seeing just how much her coat will change. Oh, and her right ear has finally developed more musculature to not flop over- which I'm relieved about.

She had a pretty nasty bout of diarrhea the other day, so I was with her the whole day, taking care of her and comforting her and what not, and it seems that now she's even more willing and interested in being around me. Her diarrhea resolved, and she got to eat some pumpkin for the first time (and couldn't seem to get enough of it).

So yeah, it's all going as I had hoped it would. Those few weeks of dealing with what seemed like the puppy from hell to the puppy that's maturing and learning was worth the wait and stress.

So thanks again to everyone for all the advice I've received so far that has helped in her training and our relationship! :-)

Sarah (Uschi)
) In these 3 pictures, she's at 15 weeks. Her coloration now extents from behind her elbow to the hidden (so far) stripe going down her back. You can see the color changes (even in the bottom of her tail- which was all black) than she was when we got her (pictured below).

 

Shelby sounds wonderful! I wouldn't be so quick to call her a sable, however. Looks like she's doing the typical "blanket to saddle" fade I have seen in my own SL. She sure is pretty.

Okay, maybe I have it wrong then. I read that a sable coat is one that has individual hairs that are multi-colored. Is that wrong? Most of the furs on her shoulders went from black, to white, to gold with black tips. The same is true for the coloration she's getting on her hind quarters too: black, to white, to a reddish-gold with black tips. :-/

It can be confusing, lol. When you begin looking at each individual hair you can find some banding, even on a Black and Tan/Red saddleback pattern. One of the parents would have to be sable, too, and I don't think that is the case with Shelby. If I read your earlier posts correctly? West German Conformation lines-- according to some pretty savvy people? 

haha okay then, woops :-) Well in any event, her colors are looking really neat.
Echo (Nikonis Twiggi) isn't on this website, but her sire and dam are: Nick vom Moorbeck and Nikonis Yera.
Seems like Shelby got some of her red fur from both her granddaddies :-P

Pretty pup, but most certainly not a sable,  those light colored hairs you see coming out are just the normal part of the process of loosing the black til the dog reaches it's saddleback pattern (of course this only applies to those who are genetically saddleback, which your pup is.) 

Young pups that are sable are very obviously sable, sometimes it's not so obvious on patterned sable adults that they are sable...but it's unmistakable when they are puppies.   

Yes, part of the sable trait is having bands of colors on each individual hair, but it's a bit more technical than that,  non-sable dogs often have bands of color on individual hairs too.  

Okay, that makes it clearer. The places where I looked up that information was talking about the genetics that goes into coat colors/patterns, with what colors/patterns are dominant, recessive and the mix of different traits. But thanks for the clarification! Regardless of what she is, I just love seeing how her coat is changing. I feel like each day her coat is slightly different than it was the day before.

Hi, UschiRun.  You might be interested to know:
my current dog is a black & red boy, when I pluck
a guard hair out of his coat it is just black, or red.
But I owned another black & gold dog, a bitch
called Vida - and I always used to marvel about
the maybe a dozen or so colours that went to make
up her coat.  The black hairs when looked at closely
were banded,  black/brown/gold/grey.  She had cream-
coloured hairs in the mix on the gold bits of her body.
Some of her hairs contained silver  (as well as her break-
through silvering in the 'bitch stripe' on her back).  As she
grew very old, the natural fading caused bits to lighten up
still further till some hairs were almost white,  If you looked
at her from any distance she was always a normal black & gold
saddle pattern;  look more closely and she had a slightly 
'salt n pepper' effect, that my lad - now himself 10.5 - has
never had about him.  Yet she had better claws/nose/eyes
pigment than he has (although his is far from bad);  I have
pictures of her at about 10 months in which she is still 'black
as black'.  And neither of them had any sables in their near-
ancestry, they were both from German 'show' lines.
L.

The red and gold colorings in shepherds are probably my favorite. In between Shelby's ears is a deep dusky red, but all of the tips of those hairs are black, so when she's far away, or not standing in sunlight, it looks mostly black. But when she's in the sunlight, the red in her face and on top of her head look pretty breathtaking. 
Vida sounds quite stunning :-) Do you have any pictures you could post?
 

UGH !  I really have trouble getting photos up on here.  Whenever I
have tried to post pics, something always goes wrong - I click things
in the wrong order, or I get an Error Message.  I managed it once
when I was putting my avatar picture of Taz on  (black & red dog,
pic may be too small for you to see it clearly, according to some
posters ? ) - that first came up in the middle of a totally unrelated post
while Ibrahim and I were having a 'conversation' !!  Sunsilver is still
waiting to get a look at a so-called Shiloh Shepherd we had where
I worked.  If I can find the one of Vida I mentioned and IF I can get
it to stick, I will.  But the good news is people are not missing much
'cos I really am a crap photographer, everything's always too far away.