Blue Whippets - Registering Colours

[BeeJay]

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Yesterday I noticed a post about blue whippets and their offspring. The new topic has since disappeared.

However I wanted to add something to it.

There is a registered racing bred peddie whippet who is black. Well he certainly looks black to myself and to others that I've asked and we've all seen him regularly for years.

Anyway his registered name is (affix removed) Blue Baron and he is registered as being blue with white trim.

If he's blue then he doesn't look like he's blue he looks like he's black.

Until I read the post that was put on yesterday I didn't think anything of it except that it's an amusing anomaly.

It seems to me that if people are going to be using colours as proof of parentage or not then breeders and owners are going to have to be very careful about the colours that the KC are registering dogs as and get them changed if they are wrong. For example. Are these fawn or brindle? Fawn, grey & white parti? Fallow Pied? Fawn, black & brindle? Fawn, black and white? Golden, white with black markings? Brown, black and white?

 

[AnnSa]

Sorry to be thick but whats Fallow

 

[talisman]

This is something I was wondering about, Megan is described as blue and white. She is a blue brindle and white. That one word being missed out makes a big difference to her apperance. I did write to the kc when I was transfering her ownership to say it was wrong but nothing was changed.

As you can see from her pic below you would never mistake her for a blue :wacko:

Wendy

 

[Seraphina]

I missed the thread you are talking about. Unfortunately, many people do not understand the genetics of colour and therefore have no idea what they may or may not get in the litter. I hear over and over again people saying they have a "blue" pup in their litter when the parents are both fawn or brindle. Some blue fawn or blue brindle do look sort of grayish blue when born, and people register them as such. Unfortunately, years down the track if somebody looks at the pedigree they may say that there is something fishy about the pedigree.

Our KC will also not change colours in the dogs' pedigrees, even if it is obviously wrong

Some blues are very dark, maybe the breeder of the black dog thought he had a blue. If he did not have other blues in the litter, only some fawns/brindles he/she may not have anything to compare him with. In my latest litter, for the first day or so, I had to put the black and blue boys next to each other to be able to determine which is which.

 

[~elizabeth~]

Some blues are very dark, maybe the breeder of the black dog thought he had a blue.  If he did not have other blues in the litter, only some  fawns/brindles he/she may not have anything to compare him with.  In my latest litter, for the first day or so,  I had to put the black and blue boys next to each other to be able to determine which is which.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

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I know, I've been thinking about this very issue too. A friend of mine recently had a litter that was all black, but there were striking differences between them. Some were the colour that is sometimes called seal (with slight fawnish colour showing through the black), the others deep shiny black. One of the seal ones looked distinctly blue for the first week. Even in adult blue dogs, not every hair on the dog is dilute, there can be a lot of black hairs mixed in and these could possibly look almost black early on. I imagine some 'seal' dogs might potentially get registered as 'brown', or heavily-sabled fawn (as they can genuinely look a lot lighter at the side of a dense black), then effectively you get an anomaly if a 'brown' dog may later produce black or blue offspring. Which is why combing databases looking for 'evidence' of fraud isn't necessarily a good idea without credible additional evidence (based on a correct understanding of the heredity of these colours).

 

[Judy]

I have known this to happen too. I expect that there are quite a few puppies registered with the wrong colour, particularly if they were registered when very young. Sometime the stripes aren't very evident on a brindle until it is a few weeks old and very dark blue can be registered as black etc. Of course it doesn't help if the breeder doesn't know what's possible and what isn't. I've also heard some people refer to what is clearly a blue fawn with a blue mask as a blue. The fact that a blue couldn't possible have a visible mask doesn't seem to stop them.

One of our dogs was first registered as brindle and white particolours as were the whole litter when in fact they were solid brindles with white trim. The Kennel Club did change it though, perhaps because it was at the breeders request, not the owners.

So yes I've often thought the same as Barbara, that registered colour alone is hardly proof of anything.

 

[Seraphina]

In the past I used to despair because most of dog breeders had not the faintest idea about genetics, now I despair because so many have tiny little bit of, often incorrect, knowledge, but they brandish it as some God given truth. :rant:

It is extremely dangerous to start rumours about dogs, now dead, with large number of descendants. In any case, what is 4 generations back and beyond is really not very relevant to our dogs. And as it is very easy to misclassify colour, it should only be used as a guide for identifying potential “pedigree problems” in present dogs and litters. If there are doubts both parents can be looked at as well as grandparents and siblings, and it is possible to do genetic testing.

There is always the chance that some long forgotten recessive gene comes through. And there are such things as mutations, albeit rare. The tri-colours in whippets are a good example. Of-course the black & tan is a recessive gene, so it is not impossible to be carried for many generations without being expressed. Black is dominant, but for instance fawn with black mask and the graying gene, which makes the mask go gray very early on, may be classified as blue fawn, yet mated to blue will produce blacks. And I have seen many blacks with the gray masks. Or full pigmented brindle with just a tiny little stripe hidden somewhere will again produce blacks when mated to blue.

The important thing now is to have our dogs’ genetic make up recorded, so there would not be any doubts in the future.