Blue shepherd? - Page 8

Ceph, Pod, I wonder if the Grey that you are refering to, has a delayed expression to it. What I mean is that I have noticed that several of my grey puppies from the past that are now 4 years and Older. They originally are born black, then they have a grey puppy fuzz, then they mature to a beautiful deep black adult hair. Now here is the twist. I have noticed that as they get past 2-3 years old they start to show lighter colored hairs that grow under tail and up the back of the legs, as well as between the toes. Now , this is not at all detected as puppies. The color that is starting to fawn as they get older has a varied tint, can be extremely light almost silver, all the way to a dark tan, though not a red. It makes the dog appear to be almost by color instead of black. Though, no markings on face. And of course the hairs are mostly up the back of the leg and not the front, exept between the toes. A side note: I am curious to know if anyone knows of any one that has done research of the Grey wolf coat patterns and variations? I am feeling that this will help make clear the silver sables that you are talking about, and also maybe the greys that I have been dealing with? With the way the the Wolf's coat has drastic variations and with the tipping on the hair, with all the other colors that can be on one strand of hair. Yet the undercoat is a typical standard Grey fuzz, and extremely dense wool like undercoat. And of Course we know that all dogs have Grey wolf in them. Also, though rumor, the shepherd supposedly has wolf in original stock. ( 4 I think?) any thoughts? J

Hey - is it just me or can anyone else see anything after Blitzen's message....I tried on two computers...Pod...is there anyway you can post again...I really want to read it :(

I had a blue in my first litter out of two extremely dark parents. It is a recessive dilute. Vida was extremely healthy. He had a beautiful coat and never had any skin or ear problems, inspite of living in the flea capital of the world, Charleston SC. It is just like the long-coat gene, a simple recessive.

:( I am sorry...I can see that there are posts being made but I cant see them :( oh well.... :) I hope I can find that article pod :) The more there are on genetics the happier I am! This is such an interesting topic!!!

I am personally against discriminating against color in all walks of life, but I aware that white is correlated with deafness in many breeds. What is the record for white gsd's? Is deafness not an issue?

I don't want to get into anything excessively esoteric, but this discussion of whether or not blue or liver dogs are "really" GSDs is hinging on evidence that may not really be the decisive factor. The liver and blues are simple recessive dilute genes (like blue danes and chocolate labs) and you need both to express them in your phenotype. So a dog we consider a GSD (phenotypically B/T and a gsd in every othe way) may carry a blue or liver (or both) recessive and you would not know it. He's bred to another like him and voila some progeny are blue or liver or -- if both parents give both recessives -- fawn or isabella or champagne (names this color is given in other breeds). Can the offspring of two dogs you considered "real" not be considered "real"? If so, what is the definition of a breed, if not the direct lines of dogs defined as being members of that breed? The blue and liver dogs must be real GSDs. We can disqualify their colors (if we like) so they don't breed, and so we can reduce the incidence of them in the breed, but the liver and blue pups have got to be considered real GSDs if the idea of a breed has meaning. (If we rejected them, we might have to accept B/T dogs who looked like shepherds but came out of mixed breedings as GSDs.) It seems to me that we have to accept this rule, yet there is another issue not explicitly raised here which is that people are not altogether trustworthy. When the sable cocker spaniels started to appear, some gullible folks following my logic would say those sable genes must have been in the parents, so if the parents are cockers, so are the pups. But sable is dominant, and those genes were not lying around dormant for a few hundred years -- they were introduced, possibly by crosses with shi tzus. The four month old,boston marked male posted on this web site raised a firestorm. One reason was not, I hope, that people were frenzied (like cavemen of 1 million BC) by the look of "other" but that they suspected, naturally, that the coloring came from a hidden cross breeding. It was only after considering the possibility that a white shepherd was introduced somewhere that it became clear that the pup could well be purebred. (That hinged on the additional idea that white gsd's were real shepherds, of course!) Chimpanzees and humans share over 98% of their genes. The fact that 98/100 genes randomly compare match does not make us the same species, much less the same breed. The identification and delineation of species and breed, both, are somewhat arbitrary. What they depend upon is simple definition: are the parents of this offspring accepted members of this breed? That acceptance trusts, until proven wrong, that each generation has met that rule, and cross breeding has not happened. The additional proviso that we do not breed disqualifying faults is merely the practical way of making up for the fact that our trust is being honored.

Pesonally, I think it's pretty silly to say that a dog is a completely different breed simply becase it is a different color, that is, unless those two different colors are kept entirely and exclusively among themselves. The gene for white fur is in the entire German Shepherd Dog population, dispersed throughout, and it's only a matter or time until two carrying the recessive gene meet and mate. White GSD's have been around since the foundation of the breed itself. The Nazi Party basically banned them in 1933, and things happened from there, with various turns and re-turns and standardizations and exceptions made. As yet, only the UKC in the US recognizes them as a distinct breed of their own rather than just a colour variation.

Here's more on the history of them http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_German_Shepherd .

It is, in fact, a German Shepherd dog.

I know Bluesheps exist, LOL I picked the name Blueshep for my screen name on this site. It was a old AOL name that I came up with and Aol made the name for me, they asked my favorite color and some of my hobbies, which included Shepherds, that's where the name came from. I don't raise Blue Shepherds and some on here have e-mailed me thinking I did. All West German here.

Here's a nice little "color" marking, coat type website that has photos if anyone is interested.... http://www.4gsd.net/colours.html