colors

[PennyT]

I sure don't want to look in all those mouths, and not too many years ago I scoffed at the idea. I don't any longer...at least not to the same extent. I raise the issue because it may be color related in ways that no one has considered much.

[laurie etc]

Originally posted by PennyT:

Being biddable did not count in my equation. I simply noted who was better, biddable or not, soft or not, powerful or not. I have no idea whether Laurie is using soft as the opposite of power, which most of us don't. I was not thinking of softness per se. I was rating my own dogs in terms of my own notions of skills, talents, and abilities. Softness, willingness to listen, and power are three different qualities. They can fit together in many different ways to make a good dog.

Because most of my dogs are pretty young -they are all started, (and I don't think there's a "dud" among 'em), but none are trained to the OPEN level yet. I was using soft to mean submissive/cooperative with humans - not in regards to their individual power or confidence on livestock. I did find it interesting that in my little group, the darker mouths are my "tough cookies" - the "free thinkers", the ones who challenge me, and "wear me out" when we're training. But then, most days I actually kind of enjoy that about them. Penny, you're right there are so many combinations of qualities that make up what someone would consider a "Good dog". And different people are going to get along best with different types depending on what they need in a dog, as well.

 

Well, guess I better go count white whiskers...

[Eileen Stein]

Penny, FWIW in Derek Scrimgeour's video The Shepherd's Pup he is interviewed by Gus Dermody, who pushes him relentlessly to try to get him to express preferences about colour, ears, eyes, white spot on tail, etc. (Derek pretty much keeps saying, over and over again, that appearance doesn't matter.) In the course of that, Derek remarks that of the last two good dogs he's had, the roofs of their mouths have both been totally pink.

 

I think the overwhelming majority of working sheepdogs, both good and bad, have black roofs of their mouths. I assume that enough shepherd's have chosen pups with the folk saying in mind to skew the results that way. All of my dogs, good and bad, have had black-roofed mouths, except for the red one, who had a dark-brown roof.

[Alaska]

As long as we're on the subject....

 

My vet asked me recently if I'd ever heard the rumor that "the white stripe down a border collie's face has something to do with herding ability." I had not (and I am not the sort to imagine that facial coloring would correlate with working ability).

 

Just to be sure, I did a search of the boards and found nothing on this subject. Usually rumors are more widespread than a single country vet. I'm idly curious about whether this rumor has made any other appearances that anyone is aware of?

[Bill Fosher]

Liz P

 

I don't think there has been much culling of colored pups in the working dog world. I can tell you why I have a prejudice against them -- MOST colored dogs come from people who are breeding for color, not for working ability. (Or who say they are breeding red dogs who can work -- same difference.) So unfortunately, when I see a dog like Rhus, it has a hurdle to overcome (which Rhus has).

 

I'm trying to get over that prejudice.

 

I once knew a really tough yellow border collie that worked both cattle and their nearest ovine relatives (Romneys).

[juliepoudrier]

Okay, just to add to Penny's "experiment" I pried open six mouths last night. All had completely dark roofs, and they run the gamut from completely nonworking to my best working/open dog. That is, I have several dogs here with completely dark hard palates who don't work well (or at all).... Sorry 'bout that!

 

J.

[Liz P]

Bill, then what happened to the colored dogs before sports like agility were big? Were they just sold as pets? Have there always been people buying up the colored dogs to breed them? I do hope that more serious working people keep the odd colored pups. I really like them but refuse to buy one from non working parents.

[Wendy V]

Liz writes:

 

"I do hope that more serious working people keep the odd colored pups."

 

I couldn't agree with you more. I truly hope to see more people, hats of all sizes, come to the handlers post with dogs of all colors. I need all the help I can get.

 

But, Liz, I don't understand why this is important to you. Why is color so important?

 

Wendy V

[juliepoudrier]

Originally posted by Liz P:

I do hope that more serious working people keep the odd colored pups. I really like them but refuse to buy one from non working parents.

Liz,

I'm kind of in the same boat as Wendy--not quite sure why color is such an issue. If I breed a dog and an odd-colored pup happens to appear, I suppose I might consider keeping it, but I think it's an academic question anyway. Unless you count red as odd-colored, the other colors really don't turn up unless they're being deliberately bred for. And since there are already relatively few working odd-colored dogs, and certainly none trialing consistently and successfully (I mean consistently successful) at the highest levels, it would be extremely difficult to produce them in working dogs. In fact, I would venture to say that you won't find odd-colored dogs in working breedings *unless* the breeder deliberately bred to get an odd color, and if that's the case, then the breeder more likely than not compromised on working ability in order to get the color--not a pup I'd want to take my chances on.

 

If you consider an odd-colored bitch that's also a stellar worker, she has only a limited opportunity to produce odd-colored pups, even if bred on every heat. An odd-colored male would have a better chance of passing on that color, since the option of breeding him quite often is available, but the minute you start choosing a dog to breed to based on its color, you are again compromising on work. At least until an odd-colored dog is consistently winning at open trials or otherwise doing superior work. And the numbers just don't support the likelihood of that happening (meaning that odd-colored dogs--excepting red--don't appear at any great rate in the working population, if at all, so it would be that much more difficult to find an odd-colored dog that was also a superior worker--but we've talked about that before as well).

 

Just my opinion.

 

J.

[Bill Fosher]

Liz,

 

Until people started breeding them specifically for color, colored Border collies were so rare that they bascially didn't exist. The myth of colored dogs being discriminated against by shepherds was, I believe, created by sport, pet, and conformation breeders as a way of feeling superior to us clod hoppers.

 

There have been some very famous colored dogs -- wasn't Longton's Tweed red?

 

If anything, the discrimination against colored pups is a recent phenomenon for the reasons that I've outlined. If you end up with red pups in a litter, many working dog people will assume either that a.) you bred them intentionally for the color, of b.) that they are out of lines that are bred that way. There are a couple of breeders around with vague ties to the working community who do breed at least partly for color, although they will often deny it.

[Northof49]

I remember going through some old registration records of the ISDS, in the 1980s and at the beginning of the registry there were quite a few "blues" that were registered - way more than "red" or "brown" which seemed to be used for either reds or sables. I know the Huddleston lines (most unregistered) had quite a few blues, and a lot of the blues can trace back to the Huddleston dogs.

 

As well, I thought Wiston Cap carried for red, but I don't remember - can someone say yeah or ney on that one?

[Eileen Stein]

Yes, Wiston Cap carried red. His descendants being as numerous as they are, it's not surprising you get quite good red working dogs popping up.

[AK dog doc]

Okay, I had to look. Pepper (good stock dog) and Finn (so-so) have mainly black palates, with a few small pink spots - approximately equal amount of pigment in both. Pepper's gums are partly black, Finn's are mainly pink, FWIW.

 

Maybe I missed this somewhere in the thread, but when you say "odd colors" are you talking about reds, merles and tricolors, or the lilac/blue/slate/lemon etc group? I ask because I was curious about the statement that the "odd" colors don't turn up unless someone is deliberately breeding for them. I never really thought about it, but I guess I'd had an assumption that merles turn up WITHOUT specifically breeding for the coat color, although far less commonly than the B&Ws. Someone correct me here.

[Julia Hunt]

Julie wrote:

 

<>

 

As someone else stated, recessives are hard to get rid of! I have a bitch who, unfortunately, carries dilute. Her mother was the result of breeding 2 ISDS-registered black and white dogs, one of that litter was blue. Every dog bred from that maternal line has proved to carry the dilute gene! I imported my bitch from the UK, bred her to a totally unrelated black and white dog from TX cattle lines, guess what I got? a blue puppy! The stud dog owner was very surprised, I don't think she'd ever seen a blue puppy!

 

On the subject of colored working dogs, here's an interesting website http://www.corriedhu.co.uk/

 

Julia

[Julia Hunt]

OOPs sorry, I was attempting to respond to Julie's assertion that you don't get weird colors unless that's your breeding goal, but for some reason the quote didn't come through.

 

Julia

[Eileen Stein]

Well, merle is not recessive, the way red and the dilution colors (blue/slate, lilac) are. To get a merle phenotype, the dog has to be heterozygous (Mm) at the M locus. If the dog has two merle alleles (MM), it will be a so-called double merle -- mostly white with very small spots of merle coloration, and will probably be deaf and possibly be blind. If it is mm, it will not show any merling.

 

Thus, you don't get merle puppies without one (and only one) of the parents being a merle. And good working merle dogs are so uncommon, for whatever reason, that 99 times out of 100 if you're producing merle pups it's because you're deliberately breeding for it and chose a merle parent for that purpose. In contrast, red pups can appear (surprise!) from two B&W parents, because red is recessive. BB and Bb give black pups, bb gives a red pup -- so you can get red offspring from two Bb (phenotypically black) parents. The dilution genes are also recessive (dd lightens black to blue, and red to lilac), but there are way more "b"s in the gene pool than "d"s, so the blues and lilacs are quite rare unless deliberately bred for.

 

I don't think anyone classes tri as an "odd color." I think nearly everyone classes merle, blue/slate, lilac, lemon, Australian red (ee), etc., as odd colors. Red is kind of in between -- I personally would not include it in the category "odd colors," but I suppose others might. Maybe it would depend on the context.

[AK dog doc]

Okay. Thanks, Eileen. What I wasn't getting was how few good working merles there were. I knew about the merle X merle defects, but was muzzy on whether or not merle was a recessive similar to the dilution colors. And I was unclear on whether tri was considered "odd" by the general working-dog handler population. Thanks for clearing that up!

[juliepoudrier]

Julia,

No need to get defensive about your blue dogs. I suppose the mistake I?ve made is assuming that folks actually keep up with the posts in the various similar threads that are going simultaneously and so don?t need to spell out what I mean *every time* I say it. I have never said "odd" colors are impossible. In fact, I think you'd also find that I've *never* even included blue in my list of odd colors. I have gone out of my way to except red from the list because it is a recessive that occurs in many working lines and so appears without being planned for. I am quite aware that blue is like red, but I suppose I should have stated that explicitly to avoid being taken to task for it. Red (and blue) is not like merle, lilac, champagne, yellow, or any similar colors that I group in the odd category (and that I thought I had explained clearly in the past). At any rate, the discussion isn't about trying to get rid of colors but rather why odd colors don't appear with great regularity in the working dog population.

 

Here are some of the things I?ve said in this thread and another recent breeding thread. I think my comments have been quite consistent. You can substitute blue for the word red wherever it appears and I will still stand by my comments.

 

The colors do exist in the breed, but many are recessive and so wouldn't appear often unless deliberately bred for.

[Note that this comment was in reference to designer colors as listed above.]

 

?But even if the farmer didn't cull in that way, if the dogs weren't used for work then they weren't as likely to be bred from, so it would be easy enough to have diminishing numbers of odd colors even if the pups weren't killed. After all, there was no real "border collie culture" outside of the farmers and shepherds who were using the dogs, so it's entirely possible that the odd colors were around but not bred from, at least not with the goal of obtaining a superior working dog. Most farmers and shepherds *still don't* breed for the odd colors (with some notable exceptions). They have become popular among the non-stockworking folks only recently and are now being bred for. But you still don't see many, if any, at trials because the folks breeding working dogs aren't putting odd color first.

I suppose I might consider keeping it, but I think it's an academic question anyway. Unless you count red as odd-colored, the other colors really don't turn up unless they're being deliberately bred for. And since there are already relatively few working odd-colored dogs, and certainly none trialing consistently and successfully (I mean consistently successful) at the highest levels, it would be extremely difficult to produce them in working dogs. In fact, I would venture to say that you won't find odd-colored dogs in working breedings *unless* the breeder deliberately bred to get an odd color?.

And the numbers just don't support the likelihood of that happening (meaning that odd-colored dogs--excepting red--don't appear at any great rate in the working population, if at all, so it would be that much more difficult to find an odd-colored dog that was also a superior worker--but we've talked about that before as well).

But red isn't something that needs to be deliberately bred for--red occurs in some of the most famous working border collie lines, so it will happen without the need for planning. Merle and the "designer" colors you see in the sport world (and some of the show world) just didn't occur with any regularity in the breeding of working dogs, largely because they would have to be *chosen for,* which of course goes against the idea of breeding for working ability./quote]

 

It was clear from my original post (though apparently not to you) that I was excepting reds and speaking specifically of "designer" colors that people have to breed for in order to get: merle, lilac, "champagne", etc. I trial a lot, and although I haven't made it to the west coast, I did make it to Sturgis last year, and I stand by my comments that you don't see "dogs of color" working at the top levels.

[laurie etc]

Actually, the dilution factor for lilac is the same as for blue - it's just the dilute of red instead of black. It would be quite possible to get a lilac from two black parents, (if they were red-factored and dilute-factored) without trying to breed a designer color.

[juliepoudrier]

Aaaargh! I GIVE UP!!! Blue obviously exists in working lines and appears from breedings that aren't intended to "get color." There are probably blue dogs listed in books like Barbara Carpenter's, but since I don't have them in front of me at the moment, I can't state it as fact. But I *personally* have never seen a lilac working dog, nor have I seen any listed in the aforementioned type books. Have you? Perhaps they exist and perhaps they could happen. But I still believe IN GENERAL you won't see them unless someone is trying to get them because they don't appear with any regularity in the working population. Do you dispute that? When I start seeing lilacs, champagnes, yellow (ee red) and those other colors not only represented but also doing well consistently in *open* trials across the country, I might change my mind. The nitpicking won't change the fact that you don't see those dogs at places like Meeker, the Bluegrass, the finals, etc. Of course, maybe they're all over the place, hidden on farms and ranches as excellent chore dogs that never get a chance to trial, but I doubt it. Disagree all you want, this is my opinion. And it's the last word I'm going to say on the subject, especially since my main point is being lost completely in people's attempts to prove that "odd" colors aren't really odd.

 

J.

[KathyF]

This is the only lilac dog that I know of that works sheep. http://www.corriedhu.co.uk/Mist.htm

 

Other than this dog, the only ones that I have ever heard of come from show lines.

 

I know of some blue dogs that have "turned up" in some working lines out in North Dakota and South Dakota. And with knowing the lines that they came from, I know that they weren't breeding for color, but for working ability. Funny how some of these blues have been showing up in working lines lately. Is it just genetics and they have skipped a few generations?? Or is it because people now days don't just cull them right away?? I also know of a breeding pair of working dogs in Wisconsin who have produced blue puppies.

 

Kathy

[laurie etc]

Originally posted by juliepoudrier:

But I *personally* have never seen a lilac working dog, nor have I seen any listed in the aforementioned type books. Have you?

Yes -Seen a few from Texas, and heard that there are more on ranches in Texas and the West where they aren't so prejudiced against the colors - to them a working dog is a working dog. I think "ignorance" of color genetics or embarrassment might cause a farmer to cull dilute colored pups at birth if they appeared unexpectedly.

Originally posted by juliepoudrier:

But I still believe IN GENERAL you won't see them unless someone is trying to get them because they don't appear with any regularity in the working population. Do you dispute that?

No. of course not.

 

Originally posted by juliepoudrier:

...The nitpicking won't change the fact that you don't see those dogs at places like Meeker, the Bluegrass, the finals, etc. Of course, maybe they're all over the place, hidden on farms and ranches as excellent chore dogs that never get a chance to trial, but I doubt it.

J

I was only speaking about the lilacs and blues - of course one doesn't see too many sables over here either, but they are certainly an accepted color in the working dogs of the UK.

 

Hypothetical Question- (not knowing the working attributes of either dog or whether they would be a viable working cross) So Julie- if Kat was bred to Scott Glen's Pleat and happened to have a lilac-tri pup - would you cull it, sell it to a pet home, or give it a chance to prove itself as working dog? (Am I mistaken, or didn't Diane Pagel get a blue pup from Tess/Pleat?)

[amc]

Alaska asked:

My vet asked me recently if I'd ever heard the rumor that "the white stripe down a border collie's face has something to do with herding ability." I had not (and I am not the sort to imagine that facial coloring would correlate with working ability).

 

I wonder if your vet is recalling the famous Siberian fox study, still ongoing as far as I know, which for nearly 30 years has been studying heritability and domestication by breeding for one and only one trait in wild foxes: tameness. Many interesting conclusions have come from the study, but a striking finding is as the foxes become more tame, say 10 or 15 generations down the road, their coat pigment changes and many develop white facial markings which are strikingly similar to the Border Collie's traditional white stripe. Identical, in fact They also develop floppy ears, a trait seen in no wild animal except the elephant. If you Google Ludmilla Trut or Dmitry K. Belyaev you should find references to the project.

[juliepoudrier]

Originally posted by laurie etc:

Hypothetical Question- (not knowing the working attributes of either dog or whether they would be a viable working cross) So Julie- if Kat was bred to Scott Glen's Pleat and happened to have a lilac-tri pup - would you cull it, sell it to a pet home, or give it a chance to prove itself as working dog? (Am I mistaken, or didn't Diane Pagel get a blue pup from Tess/Pleat?)

Laurie,

I can't really answer that hypothetical because I don't know what I'd do if such a thing happened--a number of factors would be included in the decision. For example, I like red dogs (although two of my three were given to me and the third was bought because the timing and price were right and I wanted a second trained dog, as all I had at the time to work was Twist), but when Twist's litter was born, I didn't choose one of the two red pups available (from two B&W parents whom I had no idea carried red when I asked to be on the puppy list). Had I chosen a red pup would it have turned out to be as good a working dog for me as Twist is? No one can say. One of the red pups in that litter went to a dairy farm--the farmer loves her, but who knows if she's got everything needed to work well at the open level? The other went to a pet/sport home (I think), so no way to know how that one would have turned out either. I just didn't particularly want a red pup out of that litter. That left me with two females to choose from--one that looked a whole lot like Bud (whom I like a lot) and one that was mostly black and looked to be a rough coat. I chose the pup that looked the most like the dog I liked in that cross. Had the other female been a carbon copy of the dam, then my decision may have been more difficult. A kind of arbitrary/kind of systematic decision.

 

If I did a breeding that resulted in something like a lilac tri, the pup would have to meet other critera (such as being a bitch) before we'd even get to color in my choice. To be honest, though, I'd probably choose the (female) puppy who looked the most like Kat or maybe the sire. And that kind of means that the lilac tri wouldn't be the pup I'd choose (since I'd be choosing a pup that looked the most like Kat or Pleat in the hypothetical situation above). Then again, if the lilac tri were a female and no one else wanted it (which is unlikely because *someone* would surely snap up an unusually colored pup), then I'd end up with it by default, in which case it would certainly get the chance to prove itself. At any rate, I wouldn't cull it or specify that it must go to a pet home--after all I'd prefer any pups I might create go to good homes that are also working homes--but I wouldn't necessarily choose it for myself either. If the person who did choose it ended up working it to a high standard, great! But if Pleat were my stud of choice, I wouldn't be choosing him *because* he carries a dilute gene and so could give me special colors, but rather because of his work and how I think his style would cross with Kat's and whether the cross looked good on paper. If a dilute pup happened out of such a cross, no harm done, but I wouldn't go out of my way to try and prove that such a pup would be a great worker--unless it met the other criteria already listed above.

 

FWIW, I like blue merles, and my first dog was a blue merle. But I haven't seen enough blue merles working to a high standard to want to take a chance on one--there's too much time and work that goes into an open trial dog and superior farm dog for me to want to risk it, especially since I don't move dogs on once they're with me. Or at least I haven't yet, which is why I have four retirees and two workers.

 

I've said this before: the only appearance criterion I would use when planning a breeding is to not use a white factored stud for Twist (and I like white factored dogs, too). Too great a risk of white heads and associated deafness when there are plenty of great non-white-factored studs out there to choose from.

 

J.

[amc]

Denise, help me out here, but I didn't think white factor carries the same risk of deafness/blindness even if the offspring have a lot of white. I thought the white resulting from double merle breeding was the 'lethal' type.