the 'ay' fawn shepherd,the blue and liver shepherds.............interesting??? - Page 1

Eddy - the most 'interesting' thing about the dilute colours (liver, blue, fawn) is
the way that they have been exploited.

Because they are unwanted in Showline dogs and generally by anyone seriously
interested in keeping GSDs for sports or work,  the non-standard colours do not
naturally arise in large numbers.  They - like white GSDs - occur often enough,  but
because they mainly end up in 'just pet' homes, some 'breeders' have seen a sales
opportunity for advertising them as 'rare' and deliberately set out to breed with them
to increase numbers unnaturally.  When you add those 'commercially produced'
colours to litters bred by ppl who have one or two off their own dogs simply because
they like the colour (enjoying the variety !),  you get the same situation as with black&
golds, or sables:  too many puppies produced for the demand available = dogs in
shelters.

Worse, in order to get a high volume turnover in the fancy colours, corners have too
often been cut in breeding them.  The available gene pool of dogs carrying the 'right'
alleles has been bottlenecked at various periods because it  produced a higher ratio
of the colours to sell - and consequently too little attention was paid to other genetic
matters, like hip status, epilepsy etc.   Yes, inheritable diseases occur in mainstream
colours too - but in that case breeders are usually actively trying to get rid of these faults
while producing dogs with correct conformation and accepted colours, rather than just
rushing to turn out 'more of the same'.   (It may not always seem that way when you read
complaints about breeders of regular dogs where something has gone wrong ... but do
try to set those against the VAST number of GSDs sold in total each year !)

This is mostly a direct result of the Americans and British, unlike the Germans, having
no rules about who can breed what to which, without health results, titles and grades or
Surveys having to be taken into account.

yes hundmutter..............good post..............like i mentioned in an earlier post, i love the fact the german shepherd is so diverse in coulours, sizes ,coats, even temperament.

but breeding cause of colour should never be the primary reason....................but then again white was a colour of the shepherd until the decided it would not apply anymore.................

"but then again white was a colour of the shepherd until the decided it would not apply anymore" ???????

Kinda hard to hide a white against the dark night if your purpose is security. If it didnt make any difference then working "whites" would be more prevelent. I can't remember the last time I competed against a white in obedience.

Barb

In the early 2000's Dr. George Padgett DVM reported that the White Shepherd/White GSD had 59 documented diseases.  The colored German Shepherd Dog had at least 114 - almost double. The reason is very simple. White GSD's and White Shepherds can't inherit genetic diseases from other GSD's if those GSD's don't also carry the recessive white gene. (because those dogs can't produce whites) I don't know much about the livers and blues but it would be interesting to see if the same holds true for them when it comes to genetic diseases.

Bhaugh (Barb) mentioned not having seen a white working in obedience in a long time.  Unfortunately, at least in the AKC, GSD's as a whole aren't that involved in performance or obedience. Using AKC statistics for 2002-2011 (ten years) on average, these are the number of GSD's that received the titles I've listed. (per year)
CD - 305, CDX-95, UD-33, UDX-10, TD-51, TDX-14, VCD1-4, OTCH-2 - Pretty dismal if you ask me when you stop to consider that in the past approximately 48,000 GSD's were registered with the AKC each year. (the AKC no longer makes their registration numbers public) So if the breed has an average lifespan of 10 years, do the math. There are thousands upon thousands of GSD's not competing in obedience, or performance. Seriously...only 14 TDX's on average a YEAR...think about it. This isn't a color issue, it's the whole breed.  



 

Liver isn't a dilute color.  I don't know why people refer to it as a dilute.  Yes, the black coloration is modified, HOWEVER, if liver itself were a dilute, you couldn't get fawn (which is the diulte of liver).  Double dilution doesn't exist in dogs.

yes if you are doing night patrol work with a white shepherd it's not really good but they can be used in many other areas....like sheep herding,s&r,narcotics and sniffing work,therapy dogs,family pets,k9 sports..............

the colour should not be the reason not to breed them...................white was there right from the beginning..............

Eddy, its said that the herding ppl generally don't want white dogs
for the opposite reason:  they don't stand out  enough around sheep.
Flock guarding breeds, like Pyrenees, Kuvasz, Anatolians, etc
are favoured if they are white because they 'hide' among the
sheep, the sheep accept them, and they can ambush the
marauding wolves more easily.  Dogs which HERD sheep,
ie keep them moving along as part of their job, need to be
seen by the shepherds and are therefore darker colours -
a reason given for UK shepherds not choosing almost all white
Border Collies, too. [Apart from deafness being common in white dogs.]

The other colours have [like white] all been around from the beginning
also, as has Brindle.  Its a hangover from putting several sheep-herding
types of dog together to produce GSDs, just as the different coat textures
and lengths, and soft ears, have always been there.  But they all, if left to
their  natural occurrence rates - or below (because ppl trying to perfect to
the Standard over the intervening 100 years have avoided breeding those
features) - don't show up as much as the main 'gray' (sables), and then
black saddled, with gold/tan/red/cream, colours, do.

Unfortunately when you disregard other genetics to produce MORE of any
particular colour, you have less dogs to choose from who carry the genes
for minority colours.  That means you almost inevitably breed dogs with a
higher risk of 'cementing in' other things - like health problems;  or off-Standard
general structural shape / proportions;  or light pigment, so you get yellow eyes
and 'pink'/brown noses, etc etc.  Quite good reasons why the colour IS a reason
not to breed ...

As far as I am aware double dilution does occur in dogs.  I thought that fawn in some instances is not a dilute of liver but is often the product of blue and liver, as well as the result of dilute liver. This is, I have to say, only what I have picked up on my travels so I stand to be corrected if my info is flawed. 

I'm not a geneticist,  but I got my info that liver is a dilute colour from
reading people who are or were.  EG:   Malcolm Willis saw  bb (liver)
dogs as a dilution of the Dd Black series.   Maybe a modern take on
this as knowledge of the genome has developed since, which updates
& changes that perception ?   I was hoping that GSDGenetics might
come back here and post a reply to Xeph, to clarify.
But notwithstanding whether it is correct to refer to liver as a 'dilute'
colour or not, surely that doesn't affect the line of my argument to
Eddy about exploiting the 'rare' colours ?