Although Mara’s unique expression of the Merle gene (or a heretofore unidentified modification gene) is still making exact classification of the pups a challenge, the one thing that’s for certain is that they are all homozygous for CUTE.
Christopher: Mark, Thanks for the comment. You’re right, that interpretation is how Battaglia draws his pedigree, I’ll have to confirm with the original Brackett. That’s a horrible mess of language–referring to...
Mark: Hi, I just read your article and thought I’d point out that you have the wrong interpretation of Bracket’s formula. When he starts with “let the sire’s sire…” he is referring to a new stud he... Christopher: Jen – You’re absolutely right. An error on my part. Inbreeding doesn’t change allele frequencies, it changes hetero/homozygosity, pushing like-with-like and thus the recessive alleles are increasingly...
Jen Robinson: Q1. Mathematically, I’d think that increasing expression of recessive traits requires decreased expression of dominants. Eg, with Labs, more yellow and/or chocolates = fewer blacks. Christopher: Ok, I think it’s time for a cease fire.
Jana: Oh please! Just to set the record straight – I’m on four or five Yahoo groups for collies, but I never crossposted any of the conversations from this blog onto those lists. The only Kathy postings I’ve ever seen...
Kathy Bittorf: I could not agree more it is much safer means than this breed clubs and AKC politics. Well at least a maltese that has served well was not hidden or put down so that now the truth can set us all free. A mutation can be... Kathy Bittorf: This is the problem the AKC is not neutral. A breeder pays for the DNA testing…then you pay the registry. It is all one big ‘cash cow’. Truly you know it is no big deal to have put maltese blue merle....
Kathe: Jana, can you send me a e-mail from my web site and I can get some pictures off to you? His nose is black. Kathe Jana: Yes, I’d love to see! It looks like he has a black nose, too, not gray like you’d expect. Kathe: Jana, Jake has the most beautiful chestnut brown eyes. I can try and get a close up picture of them if you would like this weekend. Kathe
Allied Communication:
The gray one looks blue in this picture but in my experience blues get darker as they get older. My blues have always been a very light grey when they were born. Once they get their adult coats they become a dark brownish gray. But the change is gradual. I don’t know how to explain the discrepancy since your gray puppy started out almost black. Your gray puppy also has patches of tan on his or her back. That is not something I have every seen in a blue puppy.
The grey one was pretty easy to differentiate as not black. It might be the photo or the luminosity of your screen (I notice that the photos look different on my different computers) or the angle. If you look at the 4 week update, he’s light grey with a white undercoat. Dare I say another possible merle sable. The early pictures were also only a few minutes after birth, so he could be wet or have blood darkening his coat.
One of the chocolate pups actually looked seal, like the link you posted, but it washed off.
The “blue” puppy from the last litter darkened up quite a bit. I don’t think you’d notice he wasn’t black unless he was right next to a glossy black dog. I’d like to see what his undercoat looks like now to get a better idea, but that requires a really upclose photo or seeing the dog in person, which might happen when the frisbee competitions pick back up here in a few months.
I love all the shades of chocolate. Will the chocolate coats get lighter or darker as the puppies age?
I see the dewclaws haven’t been removed.
Did you decide not to do it with this litter?
.-= retrieverman´s last blog ..; =-.
Hahaha, I just provided the stud dog, so I don’t have to sweat the hard stuff. Although most of the new comments on that youtube video are supportive, surprisingly enough.
I’m part of a growing minority who look at human circumcision as a ridiculous fad that raises nasty questions about parental rights vs. a child’s rights, mutilation, and sexuality…. so I’m not insensitive to the issue of “prophylactic” and unnecessary medical procedures that can not be reversed.
The factor that lead me to de-dewclaw my own dogs is that the dogs are unable to maintain those nails themselves and I find the totality of harm done when a human has to trim those nails much greater than the harm done of the dewclaw procedure. Both of my two oldest have their dewclaws, as I didn’t breed them, and they have caused problems.
One of Dublin’s doesn’t have a nice round edge, rather the top layer creates almost an ingrown nail by cutting into the cuticle bed. It traps dirt and on occasion will bleed a bit. One time this happened was during a flyball tournament at the stock show and given the level of feces on the floor I had to carry him nearly a mile to clean floors lest he get an infection. Not fun.
Celeste hates getting hers clipped so much that the sound of scissors or human nail clippers is enough to drive her out of the room. Even the sheers in the kitchen or the sound of a good veggie chop (which sounds enough like a nail getting clipped) makes her leave as well. She isn’t explosively reactive to it, but I hate alienating my dog or causing anxiety.
Looking at the pictures of the dark gray tri puppy it occurred to me that the dark gray could be the result of her being a cryptic merle. You have written that before but when I read it the first few times I think I dismissed it since I was not aware of cryptic merles and presumed that it was a misdiagnosis.
Another option is that there is a modifying gene on the blue that causes your blue puppy to start out dark while my blue puppies started out a light silver color even as they became a dark grey with a brown tint as they got older.
Yes, I think you’re right. I’ve seen some blue (no merle involved) puppies that were the color of a polished quarter. This puppy isn’t black, but it’s not a light blue like that.
Soon I’ll post some update photos from the two puppies in the previous litter. The one who was “blue tri” looks black now.
The other one has some sable issues going on that are pretty interesting.