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white factor dogs


Leigha
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We don't own either of these dogs. I pulled Lucinda out of SpokAnimal Care for Mary Ann Lindsey of Inland Northwest Rescue. She is available for adoption, but she isn't yet listed on Petfinder. She has one blue eye and we thought she might be an Aussie mix, but Mary Ann said she is all BC.

 

Lucinda-5-22-06.jpg

 

Sam was another shelter dog at Spokane Regional Animal Protection Service (SCRAPS). He was adopted from the shelter.

 

Sam1.jpg

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I have to ask... Is Ouzo white-factored, too?

Here's a picture of him as a pup (3 months)

 

IMG_0240.jpg

 

The only white he has on his back legs is almost on his belly, which now is much less evident. The white is not at all visible when he's on all fours. See below:

 

543860e4.jpg

 

aa6d2a70.jpg

 

Plenty of white on his ears. I'll try to take a picture of him belly up and show you.

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What an interesting thread. My little blue merle pup has a fully white head. There is a thick stripe of white running from hip to hip across his back. He is profoundly deaf and someone still has to finish colouring in his nose. What future health problems should I be worrying about?

 

Edited to say I've been doing my homework and answered my own questions. Loki does have erratic pupils but no sign of any visual impairment.

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You can see the white clearly going up the hind leg on Seth in this pic. The white went up in a band over his back to the opposite leg when he was a very young puppy. You can't even find white hairs on his back now though. But you can pull it up and see the white right above his leg.

 

Sethwhite.jpg

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  • 7 years later...

So Mark and Renee,

 

Let's see if I've got this straight?

 

Dog with white front legs extending up front legs and beyond the elbows and neck to collar but no white on the back or sides (other than white collar) and no white on the inside of back legs extending from paws up above hocks and the dog is NOT white factored?

 

So a dog could have all white up front legs and collar but if there were no white on the BACK legs on the inside above the hocks, and no white on the body or sides, the dog is NOT white factored?

 

I think what I'm hearing you say is that the head color and the front legs color does not matter in white factoring? It's all about the body and rear legs?

 

Thanks, trying to get this really right because I just heard today from a breeder that if the front legs have white above the elbows, even if all the rest of the dog is black, that dog is white factored?

 

 

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Wyndrunhr,

I'm not Mark or Renee (and it's usually Mark who posts), but white factoring is determined by the color on the back legs and over the hips. You will see plenty of dogs who have white legs that extend up into their white collars, and that is not white factoring. I think that would be considered just typical Irish marking.

 

Almost every one of my non-white factored dogs, even the mostly black dog, has white legs extending up into the white collar. The dark dog has white on her belly that extends slightly up one of her sides, but that's not an indication of white factoring either, because she's not white factored.

 

Here are two links to genetic discussions of white patterning or spotting:

http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/dogspots.html

 

http://bowlingsite.mcf.com/genetics/colorgen.html

 

I think the U. Sask site is more up-to-date.

 

I didn't reread the rest of this old thread to see if these sites were posted earlier--apologies if it's a repeat.

 

J.

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Well except that I bred two together (one my Twist who is closer to the piebald end of the spectrum and the stud a dog who on a simple glance might not have been noticed as white factored (sort of like Christine's Bess in the photo at the top of this page of this thread) and I didn't get a litter of all-white puppies. What I got (out of 8 puppies) was as follows:

 

1 very dark dog with minimal white (a tiny bit of white on his muzzle, chest and paws), and what white there was was heavily ticked

2 classically marked dogs, neither showing signs of white factor

1 marked more like the sire, that is classically marked except with white going up toward the stifle on the hind leg, so definitely white factored

1 piebald with little ticking

2 white factored and marked similar to their dam (who is on the first page of this thread), but with very heavy ticking so that all of their white areas appear grey (e.g., the dog second from the right on the bottom row in my sig line photo)

1 white dog, with a traditional black mask. He also has a lot of ticking, but it appears mostly under his white guard hairs so is not as obvious as the ticking on his siblings (however if you rub his hair backward, the hair underneath is almost completely black; he's the dog that's second from the left on the bottom row of my sig line photo)

 

So three of the 8 did not appear to carry white factoring, while the other five clearly did. I suppose that means that white factor is not completely dominant.

 

So as with many things related to color genetics, the result isn't always predictable. I had watched the sire work many times and really liked him and had not paid any attention to the fact that he was white factored. And yes, once I realized it I worried I'd have a litter of white puppies, but that turned out not to be the case, so either it was just a lucky exception to the "rule" or breeding white factor to white factor doesn't automatically mean that you're going to get all-white puppies. I suspect it's the latter, but that the amount of white on each parent probably plays a role.

 

J..

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Not that it matters, because he is neutered and even if he wasn't, he isn't anywhere near breeding material, but wow, I just found out my R/W is white factored. I knew that the split face, the tail, the ruff, and the front leg didn't count, but I never would have guessed the two thin lightning bolts up the fronts of his back legs meant anything. Neither of his parents looked like what I think of as white factored. Good thing because I personally don't like white factored. I like learning something new though.

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Hmmm...the matter of grammar being that you were using a compound modifier but without the hyphens? Sorry about misunderstanding your meaning; I guess this would be an example that could be used in high school English to illustrate why hyphenated compound modifiers can clarify meaning. ;)

 

But the point remains that you may or may not get all-white pups. I happen to not care if my dog has a lot of white on it, but that's not what anyone was asking. All other things being equal, a 12.5%* chance of getting an all-white pup just isn't a deal breaker for me.

 

*Yes, I know that this percentage wouldn't be the same for every litter, but it does show that in some cases at least the risk of getting all-white pups isn't tremendous.

 

J.

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Not sure how to ask this... I'm a bit confused about breeding two white factored dogs together... Since a lot of people don't like all white pups, I am gathering that the general consensus is to avoid breeding two white factored dogs together just in case - but then isn't that, in a way, selecting for color (or rather, selecting against a color - assuming white is a color, but that's a whole other issue)?

 

I can see wanting to avoid breeding if there are potential hearing issues, but previous threads seem to suggest this is rare and that white factored dogs aren't more likely to have health concerns... Not trying to say anything, I'm genuinely confused (which is my usual state on the boards :) )...

 

Rebecca

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Your question is a good one. I'm not the right one to answer but I'm avoiding housework right now...

 

Perhaps part of the justification (other than concerns about issues relating to "too much white") may be that there are many dogs that are not white-factored and many dogs that are, and so you still have a lot of potential pairings to choose from if you wish to avoid a *double* white-factored mating. The gene pool to choose from is still pretty large. And I don't think anyone's implied that a lot of white is a proven issue but maybe just in case...

 

The problem with color breeding in general, particularly with the "candy colors", is that you are breeding deliberately with the goal of producing as many of certain colors as possible. When something like that is your goal (the generic "you"), it's going to take away from the goal of producing the best working-quality pups you can produce. The gene pool you have to choose from, with limits on the colors you wish to produce, is going to be very reduced.

 

I think that there is, among old-timers in particular, a strong discrimination against dogs "of color" - now, was that based on something that people saw (that those occasionally-produced "odd-colored" rarely were quality workers, maybe) or on something that people thought but had no real basis or a basis on a very limited extent of experience (they'd heard that was the case or the only dog they ever saw that was a certain color was not a good dog, maybe). Once the prejudice was there, the old-timers may have strongly culled against those colors, rightly or wrongly.

 

That said, there are some good red dogs out there and an occasional good merle or sable, but all are pretty rare in an overwhelmingly black/white and black/white/tri population of good working dogs. Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

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Thanks, Sue! Let me see if I understand this:

 

Say I want a dog that is hot pink with purple polka dots, and for whatever reason, I know the female I have carries that gene. If I want to make sure there's a dog in the litter, I'd have to match that female to the handful of males that carry the hot pink with purple polka dot gene (I know, this was a really bad application of genetics in general). This is breeding for color since there is only a handful of dogs in the country that carry that gene and I'm only looking at those instead of looking at working ability.

 

But, since there are so many dogs that have white factoring and probably equally many more that do not, eliminating the dogs with white factoring (assuming I have a white factored dog) doesn't mean I'm not breeding for working ability. If there's a dog that I really like that is also white factored, I could go ahead and breed them, knowing that I might get a white dog with 12.5% chances - on average (or 1 out of my 8 puppies will probably be white?). But, if I could find another dog that was not white factored, that balanced my female equally as the hypothetical white factored one, I could just go with him. Since it's an equally good match, it's not selecting for or against a color, just really avoiding the white factoring... (this is more of a long winded way to say, did I get this straight in my head?).

 

Thanks!

 

Rebecca

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First I want to say that the percentage given was for my one litter only so doesn't apply across the board. I could have as easily had 7 all-white puppies if the genes had combined differently. I was a bit surprised at having nearly half the litter very classicly marked, including the mostly black dog, given the white factoring on both parents, but there you have it.

 

You can go through Barbara Carpenter's books and find quite a few white factored dogs, though such dogs with a lot of white on them are much more rare. Still, the point is that white factoring appears in a good number of dogs who were national or International Supreme winners (which would imply that it appears with some frequency in the general working population, which in some ways will make it harder to avoid).

 

Personally I feel that if you choose against the dog who best complements your own because of its color (no matter what that color), then you are including color as a criterion. Clearly it's done, but once again, we're talking about color types that appear with some frequency (white factor) vs. color types that occur with little frequency (merle, for example). And if two dogs are equal in the eyes of the breeder, with color being the only thing that separates them, then I wouldn't quibble with the person who then chooses on the basis of the dog s/he simply likes the looks of. <--which is what I think you're asking.

 

Just as there is a prejudice against red dogs, there is also a prejudice against mostly white dogs, and although the former has lessened somewhat, the latter has not. So some people will avoid the white factoring because they really don't want to risk producing white pups.

 

The funny thing about the litter I produced was that I had narrowed the choices down to two dogs, one dark, the other the eventual sire, who really just looked classically marked. And this may make me look bad, but it wasn't until after I had actually bred Twist that it occurred to me that the sire might have had white going up the stifle. I chose him strictly on what I liked about his work and what I was hoping to create in the pups. I remember calling a good friend of mine and asking her, "Is he white factored? I'm not picturing it, but suddenly I seem to remember that there was white at his stifle." Once she confirmed the white was indeed up his stifle, I started worrying about producing all-white pups, but of course it was done by then, and I ended up with just one all-white pup, who happens to be well-known in this part of the world as my main set out dog at trials. Although some people believe that their dogs mistake him for another sheep, many more have noted that his brightness makes it easy to spot where the sheep are being held. Go figure. :D

 

J.

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...Just as there is a prejudice against red dogs, there is also a prejudice against mostly white dogs, and although the former has lessened somewhat, the latter has not. So some people will avoid the white factoring because they really don't want to risk producing white pups.

 

 

J.

I have heard people speculate that sheep react differently to a white dog. Others see no difference. I wonder if the white dog's similarity in appearance to a wolf might make sheep (or shepherds) edgy?

post-10533-0-77659900-1376166395_thumb.jpg post-10533-0-28904600-1376166419_thumb.jpg

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I'm fairly sure Gret is white factored with the white up the stifle, but she's camera shy and sleeping at this point in time - I don't wake sleeping babies or sleeping dogs on a matter of principle and my own sanity.

 

Julie, Thanks for clarifying... For some reason I took it as a calculation based on the number of color genes, the prevalence of passing it along, whatever - like those old high school science things of, if mom has blue eyes and dad has brown eyes, but recessive blue, the likelihood of their second granddaughter by marriage will have blue eyes is ____... (exaggerating)

 

Thanks again for taking the time to answer,

 

 

Rebecca

 

btw, Geonni, every time I see your sig pic, I still do a double take!

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