Brown and tan border collies..

[alligande]

I was waiting for my husband to finish a 10k this weekend and of course had to say hi to the only dog there. Once I got close the dog was a border collie in everything but coloring, build, coat, feathers, head, tail, eyes... The owners vet had told them he was a cross between an aussie and border collie but I could not see any Aussie.

So I thought I would ask here if border collies came in brown and tan colors, I have to send the owner an email about food and thought it would be fun to send a picture of a brown dog, if such a dig existed.

[G. Festerling]

http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Permanent/BCColors_Sable/BC_ColorSable.html

http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/Permanent/BCColors_Saddle/BC_ColorSaddle.html

Sable maybe?

 

I had a sable many years ago. Never could get most folks to believe that she was purebred.

[ThunderHill]

Might have been a "red" tricolor as well. Brown, with tan and white points. A Google image search for "red tricolor Border Collie" should turn up some pictures.

 

Liz S in central NY USA

[Debbie Meier]

Not his final color, he will change when he blows out his puppy coat, Scotty:

 

 

 

[juliepoudrier]

So I thought I would ask here if border collies came in brown and tan colors, I have to send the owner an email about food and thought it would be fun to send a picture of a brown dog, if such a dig existed.

If you're asking about the color that would be called browb/liver in other breeds, but which we refer to as red in border collies, then yes, they come in that color. It's red tri. Aussies come in that color too, though, so it's possible the dog you saw was a mix, or not.

 

My first dog was supposed to be a border collie x aussie. He was a blue merle and I think shelter folks automatically assumed aussie when they saw merle (people made the same assumption about my red border collie back then as well). Sometimes I would look at Indy and think it was quite possible he was a purebred border collie (nothing about his look suggested aussie), but he definitely had the characterstic bounce and bark of an aussie....

 

BTW, the dog in the lower left corner of the photo in my sig line is a red tri (brown, tan, white). You can see the tan eyebrow over her right eye.

 

Here's a better photo. You can't really see it, but she has tan freckles on her lower legs as well:

 

J.

[Olivia]

If you are talking about red and tan rather than brown and tan then yes, and they come in different shades of red, from dark auburn to lighter red. Here is a picture of my red tri girl. She is a pretty dark red with tan eyebrows, cheek patches and tan on her legs between the red and white.

[Jo&Tex]

I have a red tri. She alternates between being liver coloured in winter and having a orangey bloom in summer.

A sheep herding friend of mine in Arizona just brought home a new pup. Pup has black and tan markings like a gorden setter. He is from working lines and she plans to trial with him. I'll see if I can get her to share a photo with us.

 

In the meantime...this is Wren, my red tri.

[Cynthia P]

Could it have been a kelpie?

[gcv-border]

Here are two photos of my boy to add to the pics of a red tri BC. He trends more toward chocolate. And yes, I am often asked if he is an Aussie - because of his coloring.

 

Jovi

[alligande]

I have a red tri. She alternates between being liver coloured in winter and having a orangey bloom in summer.

A sheep herding friend of mine in Arizona just brought home a new pup. Pup has black and tan markings like a gorden setter. He is from working lines and she plans to trial with him. I'll see if I can get her to share a photo with us.

 

In the meantime...this is Wren, my red tri.

 

The dog looked a lot like your Wren, the only white markings where the feet. Maybe a little more tan but very similar. Thanks everyone for your pictures. When I met the dog it was playing ball and its movement, look, everything shouted border collie it was just the color was wrong... and I have always known they come a huge variety of colors just did not know if this was one of them....

[gcv-border]

Here is the Border Collie Museum link:

 

http://www.gis.net/~shepdog/BC_Museum/

 

Scroll down the page to get to the link for the "Color Pages". Lots of photos of border collies in all the colors available.

 

Jovi

[Schmause]

This is my boy

 

His mom was a very light brown border collie and his dad was black and white.

[juliepoudrier]

Cute pup! He's what we'd call Aussie red, which is genetically ee (described genetically as yellow). Red (liver or brown) is genetically bb, which is recessive to B, black. Sounds like mom was also ee red and dad must have carried the recessive e gene as well.

 

J.

[airbear]

Here's my friend's dark red tri-colour pup. His mom is red and his dad is a flashy saddle-back tri.

 

[nancy in AZ]

Which reminds me, Julie, perhaps you can confirm something for me. I was involved in pulling a bc from the shelter last week. She's a heavily ticked white factored dog who was described as a very deep, very dark red and white. And she does appear to have a red tint in certain light, but she has black nose leather. I thought she must be a black/wht who is sunbleached since if I recall, genetically, a red dog will have red nose leather.

 

But Kit, my ee red does definitely have black nose leather. Does this all make sense?

 

[MrSnappy]

ee red (yellow) masks whatever colour the dog is "underneath." As a black dog will always have black nose leather, an ee red who is genetically a black dog masked by the ee gene will have black nose leather. If the dog is genetically red (brown/chocolate/liver) it will have brown nose leather. Etc.

 

RDM

[juliepoudrier]

From Sue Ann Bowling's coat color genetics site:

 

e, recessive red, overrides whatever genes is present at the A or K loci to produce a dog which shows only phaeomelanin pigment in the coat. Skin and eye color show apparently normal eumelanin, although some ee dogs appear to show reduced pigment on the nose, especially in winter (snow nose.) A number of breeds show recessive red as a normal or even breed-wide characteristic - Irish Setters, Golden Retrievers, yellow Labradors. In a few breeds such as the Cocker Spaniel "reds" may be either AyAy or ee, and crossing the two can produce unexpected blacks. I believe there may be a key in the color of the whiskers, which on my observations seem to be black in AyAy breeds and straw to cream (dilute red) in ee breeds, always assuming the whisker base sprouts from a pigmented area. Little hypothesized that dogs with both forms of red (Ay-ee) were not viable and would be lost before birth.

 

From Sue Schmutz' U of Sask coat color genetics page (I think this page is more up-to-date than the previous page):

 

This gene has two common alleles E and e. Dogs that are e/e are red or yellow due to phaeomelanin production, and this is the recessive genotype. When E is present in a dog, it usually has some black or brown in its coat because of the production of eumelanin. The E allele is dominant to the e allele.

 

Although the e/e genotype is the most recessive at this locus, it is epistatic or masks other genotypes at other loci, such as the K and A locus. See more about those loci on separate pages.

 

Here is her page on brown.

 

It's all very complicated!

 

P.S. I would say the dog you pulled is B&W. I've never seen a red/brown dog with black nose leather, and although other breeds have a range of color depth that goes with the ee gene, I've only ever seen the yellow in border collies, and per what I understand from the genetics websites, if black is at the K locus and ee masks that K locus, then an ee dog wouldn't have a black nose (but never say never I guess, and I may be misunderstanding what I've read too!).

 

J.

[Nanda & Nelson]

Nelson is red and has a red nose:

 

[Enya]

This BC is brown & tan with a little white on the chest.

 

[Star]

This BC is brown & tan with a little white on the chest.

 

 

Wow. Gorgeous!

[gcv-border]

Wow. Gorgeous!

 

I was thinking the same thing.

 

Jovi

[berocca]

Not the best images, and from memory I had a polarising filter on LOL but this was my friend's choc tri Milo.

 

[Lillo]

Nelson is red and has a red nose:

 

 

He's gorgeous xx