sable color in other breeds?
I have a sable corgi and am wondering in which other breeds this color occurs. I know collies, sinice my guy is frequently mistaken for Lassie (!!!!) and I assume shelties and maybe GSDs....others?
Does a sable in other breeds have to have a white ruff? Or is "sable" a reference to the black tipped hairs and the color marks on the head--that monk's hood?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Judi, Dawn, Soffie & Griffyn on
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http://www.dogsindepth.com/index.html This website has quite a bit of info on all breeds and their colors/markings.
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Permalink Reply by Heather and Ella on
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I would never have guessed, add Pomeranian to the list. Check out this wikipedia entry for "Coat (dog).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_%28dog%29
Sable is on the bottom of the color list
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Permalink Reply by Joanna Kimball on
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Sable is actually one of the most common colors there is in dogs. Most of the dogs you think of as "tan" "fawn" or "gold" are sable - Great Danes, pugs, Pekingese, Pomeranians, etc. Certainly Shepherds, Tervuren, Collies, and so on.
Sable dogs are born with black tipping but often completely lose it by the time they're adults. All red and white (and red-headed tri) Pems are sables, as are all red and white Cardigans. Breeders of both breeds call most of them red and the ones who retain the tipping into adulthood sables, but that's not a real label - genetically they're the same and they're both sables.
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Permalink Reply by Vee Luther on
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That's so interesting...so it is the black tipping that indicates the genetic "sable" , right? I noticed on my red and white corgi--and he's a very intense red color--that he has a few black tipped hairs here and there. So would a red and white be marked down in a show ring for some black tipped hairs?
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Permalink Reply by Beth on
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Here's an article on the genetics of color:
http://www.pembrokecorgi.org/art_color.html
Black tips are not marked down in the ring, to the best of my knowledge, as it's not a color fault. My male has heavy sabling, especially apparent when he's out of coat (like now) and the guard hairs lie flatter. You can see a faint black "saddle" on his back and some black hairs on the back of his ears. My limited understanding is that you call them a "sable" if they have the black-tipped hairs forming a cap on the head. One show breeder told me Jack is technically red-and-white, with sabling, rather than true sable, but I'm not entirely certain of that.
Here's some pics of a heavily-marked sable:
http://www.pwcca.org/colors_SW.html
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By the way, if you read the genetics article, because red is dominant over tri there are actually three different genotypes (gene combinations) that give the same outward color of red. Most people don't gene-test their dogs for color, as far as I know, so theories abound about what gives you outward expression of black tipping and what doesn't. The author of the article suspects that a dog who carries the red-headed tri gene recessive to the solid red gene will show some outward black tipping on its coat, but in her article much of that is speculative.
Some dominant genes are completely dominant (totally hide the recessive gene they are paired with) and others are incompletely dominant (allowing some expression of the recessive gene they are paired with). My genetics knowledge is about maxed out at that point. :-)
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It's the black (or chocolate or blue or what have you) tipping AT BIRTH, not into adulthood. Many adult genetic sables have no black at all.
Whether it's penalized in the show ring depends on the breed. In Danes we don't like a lot of sootiness; in other breeds it's the exact opposite. But color in the ring isn't usually as important as people think it is, unless the dog is completely the wrong color. There are lots of dogs out there with sooty color, washy color, white toes, etc. and if they're good otherwise they do fine.
Again, there's no difference between what Pems call red and sable except in the breeds that have what's called ee red, which is actually a very intensified yellow. Irish Setters are a good example. They're not sables; they're actually black dogs with the same color mutation that produces yellow labs. Dogs that are ee red do not (actually cannot) have a single black hair on them; they cannot express that kind of melanin. Most of the rest of the red/fawn/tan breeds are sables.
I know it's confusing because breeders have names for things that aren't actually different in real life. There isn't a real distinction between red and sable, but breeders tend to name what they see rather than what is genetically true so there are lots of different names for the same thing, and lots of the same names for different things..
For example, in Vallhunds breeders call certain dogs "grey," when they're not grey at all. They're black-based sables with a dilution of the red pigment so they look black and cream mixed together instead of black and tan mixed together. Weimaraners call "grey" a diluted chocolate pigment with no sabling at all. In Poodles they call "grey" a dog of any color who progressively lightens as it ages. Three completely different things going on with one name.
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This is every bit as confusing as colors in horses! I'm glad my Holsteiner mare is a bay because it's one color that's easily recognized and named!
Thanks for the genetics lessons.
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