reversed mask - Page 9

My observation has been that people see what they want to in a phenotype.  Looks are usually a mixed bag .. looks like maternal grandma acts like dad or looks like mom and has maternal grandmothers personality.  How a dog moves and how a dog carries himself tells me more about what is under the hood than a mask or whether bi-color or black and tan.  Most of mine are and have been black and there are terrific diffences in ears, head shape, body length, etc. all in one large litter.  With blacks the color variable is off the table .. although there are some color variations even in blacks .. especially right after birth.  I've seen reddish puppies that darken to black later, blacks that get darker black with age, and blacks that will bleach easily in the sun to reddish black.  Even black is not just one color despite what the color chart for genetic inheritance says .. genetics is never that simple.  Puppies tend to be like their sire and dam .. plus some have a good dose of the grandsires or granddams .. that seems to be where most traits come from .. not the 33rd cousin or a fifth generation line breeding.  Skeptical that the mask has any linkage to useful traits such that dogs with reversed mask have a different tool set either good or bad that reaches beyond their immediate relatives.

Clarification

I do not think Duke's dog is ugly. I think his mask is.

Hopefully, as this thread goes on, I will not be accused of killing JFK.

Duke,

I do not have rich vocabulary, hence I used the word ugly to describe his mask , maybe it is a too strong word. Anyway what I wanted to say is I don't like his mask and face expression at all. Had I thought you were too soft to hear that I would not have spoken up.

well more than one excellent breeders and trainers of BC's will absolutely claim that the superior breeding female has 3 whiskers all emanating from the same point on the underside of the lower jaw.

 

after laughing my butt off at these old hands i starting checking for this tuft on some highly credentialled females, they all had it.

 

how many crappers also had it i don't know.

 

biases are easy to confirm if you are looking to confirm them.

 

 

Oh Ibrahim, you know you were on that mound !  

 

I understood your use of "ugly" only referred to the mask

(or lack of one);  someone else used the word "hideous",

and I expect they were only talking about the actual markings

not the whole dog, too.  But the whole dog was being questioned

when 'everyone' he knows said to Duke "Don't breed with that, find

something prettier" or words to that effect.  I am glad so many on

here feel that attitude was mistaken.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b30_1372049732&comments=1

When I started out with GSD, as a much younger person, I liked a very dark face & thought the reverse masks were kind of 'hokey', old fashioned. But as my experience grew, so did my appreciation of this color pattern. It's hard to say, for me, that a good dog is a bad color. Or in other words, as I grew in admiration of these dogs, the reverse mask grew on me as well. Now, I love it. If you look back into my favorite dogs pedigrees, you'll find many reverse masks with V or VA ratings. So, I think they must meet the standard as well. I hope that helps.

jackie harris

 

Well, DenWolf, there you go bringing science, and research which has stood the test of time and scrutiny and is the basis for a great deal of what we know about the link between physical traits and behavior in mammals, into the discussion...what's wrong with you, girl???

I promise I am not being stubborn 

Color and pattern

We all know various colors of dog hair/coat , for example red, black, grey and so on

a dog of two colors for example black and red like those of the show line, has the black color on the back and red on legs and chest. The black color making a shape of a saddle. The arrangement of both colors on dog body is the pattern. Colors in this case being black and red. If my understanding is correct black and red is the color of the dog and saddle back is the pattern.

Side note: We also call the red color the base color and the black the topping (that is a translation from my home language).

Ok, let us go to the face of the dog

Mask: is the covering to the face. for example in a show GSD Black/Red, the base color is red and covering is black. Usual pattern/common pattern, Black color at nose and muzzle sides and as you gou up the face it lightens up near eyes and base color (red) becomes more visible. That is the common pattern of a face mask of a dog, shades vary in intensity, also area of face covered varies, but pattern is just that.

 

Okay, now we come to reverse mask

Here we have almost opposite pattern or inverted pattern, where nose is black but muzzle sides are red and top of face near eyes and forehead is darker (not lighter as in normal) pattern.

 

Lack of mask, is a description of a mask that has less black covering of face,

Light mask, is a description of a mask that hs lighter mask, a lighter shade of black

 

Now a reversed mask dog has less area of muzzle covered with black than a normal good dark mask.

Lack of mask one, has less area of muzzle covered with black than a normal good dark mask.

Our interest in mask is not the pattern but rather total area covered with black, the darker the black and the bigger area it covers is the better.

Now look at reversed masks, some of them are darker than others, true?

Some of them have better drawn reverse pattern than others, true?

I do not like a reversed mask in general, still some of them look prettier than others, some of them look darker than others, Duke's dog in question on the scale of reversed mask is not at top of the ladder.

 

 

 

 

Research actually HAS shown there to be a correlation between the location of the whorl--that's an area of hair or fur on an animal, humans included, which grows in a circular pattern instead of all the same direction as the rest of the coat--on the heads of beef cattle and their temperament. Cattle with the whorl placed high up on the face demonstrate a 'flightier' or spooky nature, startle more easily, and typically have a much larger flight distance perimeter than do cattle raised in the same conditions but which have the whorl located further down the animal's face.  Similar observations have been made for horses, and work is being done to investigate if there is any significance of whorls in dogs as well.

That same whorl is also being investigated as it pertains to fertility in cattle.

So it is not far-fetched to suspect that coat color and markings, as well as hair whorl patterns, may be linked to specific behavioral characteristics in the dog, and that the reverse-masked dogs may reliably possess certain preferred traits more prominently than do their traditional-masked relations.

Is the whorl diagnostic or predictive .. did cattle with a whorl pass the trait on to their offspring and if so do those animals have the same trait .. sounds like research from the institute of irreproducible results .. similar to "cold fusion".  Behavior is 80% environment ( from fertiliztion of the egg and embryonic development to adulthood and beyond) in most animals.  There are outliers in every bell curve response or linear correllation response but the majority of behaviors are a result of environment over generations and time.  American Bison as a rule are more protective of their calves than Holstein cows because Bison have had fewer generations and less selection for docile behavior or put another way the selection pressure on Bison was for a vigorous defense of their newborn and calves against predators.