Late night musings on hair/coat colour

Ravenwood

Ravenwood

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As you know, Rosie is our first border collie and this may well be normal but I find it fascinating!

She is, I suppose, officially a tri colour but is predominately black. But when you smooth her black coat the wrong way, she is brown at the base.

Pictures to show what I mean

Normal, flat lying hair....

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Roughed up...

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and again on her shoulder.....

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Bizarre isn't it? or is it? Is this normal for most breeds?

Like I say, just a late night pondering ;)

Can you show me similar with your dogs whatever breed? I can certainly say that labs and springers don't have this! :p
 
No actual pictures to show but sable GSDs have a huge mix of hair colour in the base/undercoat and top coat.
Some of my fella's hairs have four bars of striping on them, IE grey, gold, grey, gold.

Sables are born very pale, then they generally darken as they get older (unlike black and golds, which pale out as they get older) and can change colours several times before (and even after :p) maturity.
My fella started off as the 'normal' grey with gold, then his base coat went very red, and is now almost gold sable again, just a bit darker.
You can also make out the 'combtooth'/'brushstroke' effect over his saddle area which is quite common in 'showline' sables.

There is no word for sable in German, just grey, my dog on his pedigree is literally translated as 'brown and grey' and there are myriad descriptions, if you look at my pictures of the working line sheps, they are a different colour pattern, but still sable (grey) in variations of grey, dark grey and black sable. It's as much a gene as it is a colour if that makes any sense!!! At least one parent must be sable, to produce sable puppies.
 
The hair left all over my clothes / sofa / house are multicoloured thanks to a little madam who insists on spending her time all over the furniture :p They usually consist of solid blocks of colour if that makes sense?
 
Our breed genetecist Dr Willis has written about it at length already RW :p
Was going to link an article by a woman who bred lots of the dogs in B's pedigree last night but I thought you'd be sleepy enough already :p
 
Henry changes colour completely when clipped - to the extent that I didn't immediately recognise him when I went to pick him up the first time he was done! He is predominantly black when his coat is long, but has much more roaning when he is clipped down short for summer.
 
I've just picked a hair off my trousers and it has four stripes of colour, white/brown/black/white from base to tip. Her undercoat is pure white, though.

She's a very bizarre colour at the moment, I never know how to describe it, I guess she's technically a dilute black but has red highlights on the back of her ears and back legs which is usually described as wolf grey. She used to have a lot less red and was definitely black and white before. :confused:

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I reckon Toroq is seal and white, as he has a kind of grey-ish halo effect, where I think his longest guard hairs are lighter?

Total guess though, really!
 
Spudlet said:
I reckon Toroq is seal and white, as he has a kind of grey-ish halo effect, where I think his longest guard hairs are lighter?

Total guess though, really!
Click to expand...

Nope Toroq is one of the few true black and whites malamutes in the UK, a true black and white had a black or dark grey undercoat whereas a seal and white has a white or cream undercoat
 
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