Eye Colour In Blue Whippet

[Seraphina]

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Eye colour inheritance is weird, I always assumed that the dark eye would be dominant, but got a surprise when two reddish brown eyed dogs produced one with eyes almost black. Small pups' eyes are often blue, the paler blue will turn light, the navy ones will be darker. In the USA they have a different standard and they do demand dark eyes. The blue dilute coat often comes with paler eyes, but not necesarily. My Genevieve's eyes are not yellow, and her cousin Bluebelle has brown eyes.

 

[~elizabeth~]

her cousin Bluebelle has brown eyes.

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That's what I was thinking of. Gelert's blue brindle sister produced blue partis with dark leather and eye/eye markings.

I'm sure some of these things are polygenetic in some way. You can take 2 perfect exhibition birds, from different lines, with correct colouration/lacing etc but the offspring will NOT be perfect or well marked suggesting that there may be a selection of different genes responsible in each line otherwise they'd breed true. Although there is a simple on/off gene responsible for say lacing/non lacing that follows Mendelian rules, the modifying factors that actually make the markings 'good' are quite complex. You have to inbreed quite aggressively to get them back to exhibition quality, not something I approve of; you can measure the increase of genetic problems by a sharp decrease in hatchability and fertility in the adults that survive incubation.

I'm quite glad colour has always been deemed irrelevant in whippets; I like the fact that no two are ever exactly the same. :lol:

 

[Ane]

Nimbus (and his brothers) had lovely bluish green eyes as puppies

As an adult he's got quite dark eyes for a dilute, and he's got a well pigmented nose as well.

 

[~elizabeth~]

Also some blue or black dogs will be heterozygous at the K locus (Kk) but will still look black as it dominant, so you could have blue dogs that are Kkbb and KKbb, which might also affect the nature of the blue coat/dilution, and allow more depth of pigment to show through.

I find this with black ducks although it's a different gene responsible; you get bits of laced fawn showing through in places, a bit like some black whippets that show fawn shading ('seal' on the whippet colour pages). If you breed from these you start to get a mixture of fawn and black offpring; the black ones of this kind often have paler/more orange eye colouration, although it's still what you'd describe as dark brown (which is helpful in selecting breeding stock without doing tedious rounds of test hatchings).

I remember now why I gave up on exhibition stock and only keep a few for fun now :wacko:

 

[oakmoorehill]

When we had pups last year 3 vary pale brindle bitches had very vivid blue eyes but by the time they were 12 weks old their eyes had gone brown one of these 3 girls was Maggie and she came back to us at 5 months old and her eyes had gone dark brown

 

[ponygirl]

I really am trying to understand, but I've gone dizzy with the effort....I was so rubbish at genetics at school, and really, at the time thought I'd never need it anyway (bit like computers really) :b

I'll just wait with bated breath to see what William ends up with

Off to start a thread about big noses now...