OK here's my question.  When is a red really a sable?  (Or does it matter?)
My r/w boy has a few black hairs among the red ones on his back and the
backs of his ears have a lot of black hairs if you look closely. Does that
make him a sable?
Cathy Rathbone
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August 3, 2001
I have a sable PWC, and thought I would direct you to her photo page if you want any of 'em, go ahead and use 'em! Also, if anyone has anything on the genetics of sabling, I'd be fascinated!

http://k9rainbow.tripod.com/photos
Cait Hunter

It's a redhead thing...
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(Is Wenna a sable or tricolor?  Webmistress)

Brenda,
Thank you for your informative mail.  I now understand the difference
between partial & full sables.  I still have a few questions, if you don't mind..

Taija
OK, here are a few answers for you........when I have some extra time, I am
going to write my own article that explains  in layman's terms the order of
dominance and the method I use for determining each dog's coat color gene pairing.  I use the card game of Poker as an analogy.........easier to
understand that way!

1. Is there any way figuring out (without breeding and getting sables as
a result) who MIGHT have the sable allele?

1.  Yes - you can many times do this via pedigree.  But, you have to have
alot of additional information to fill in all the gaps.  In other words, we
could research a dog's pedigree, and based on what they are phenotypically, we can determine what they are genotypically.  Full sables are easy.  They are always sable, black-headed tri.  To get more full sables, you must breed them to other full sables or black headed tris- that's the only way.  Partial sables are, of course more difficult to map; but as I said previously, if you have a dog that has sabling on it's body but NOT on it's head, you have a dog that is genotypicallysable, red-headed tri.  For this dog to produce full sables, again, it would need to be bred to a full sable or a black-headed tri.  I think you can see where this is going..............both Patti Gustafson and I believe that the sable factor (which every book you will read says is a modification of the red gene) in Corgis is REALLY somehow linked to the black-headed tri gene!

2. When bred on, for example my Armas who I think is a full sable, what will define if the puppies (if getting sables) will get darker/lighter in colour generation after generation?

2.  Armas is a BEAUTIFUL full sable!!  He would do well here in the States!
(well, not with the tail.........)  Here is another interesting sable fact
- full sables get darker as they age.  Armas will continue to get darker
with every coat change.  One of my more "famous" sables, Ch. Brynlea MakeMine Mink, now at age 6, is nearly black!  And another point, while full sables are usually identifiable as puppies, partial sables are not.  The
sabling may not come in until adulthood.  It is also interesting that many
dogs that appear to be reds really have the gene pairing red, sable; and
they had sabling as young puppies that goes away.  These are the ones in
the pedigrees that are hard to identify!  As far as Armas carrying on his
beautiful deep coloring, again, breeding to other sables or black headed
tris will keep your full sabling.  The intensity of the sabling can vary as
that is regulated by a different site.  We have found that the deeper
sables come from lines that carry deeper pigment all around - in other
words, if a line that has reds in it has good bright reds and not washed
out reds, then the sables and tris will have deeper color as well.

3. Which will define the intensity of the sable colour? In the pictures
I attached, there's my friend's dog Freddo who's of a lighter color but
is he a full or a partial sable? He's much lighter than Armas and he
hasn't developed those black markings as deep as Armas has. In fact, now
that he's about 14 months, I still can't see if he has any black on his
back the way Armas has. Even his head markings are lighter.

Armas has red parents, first blackcap comes from his sire's side in 3rd
generation as well as first sable (as long as I'm aware of) who's Dygae
Super Tramp. From his dam's side, first sables can be found in 4th
generation but now black headed tris unless there are some in 5th
generation. So I'm quite curious to know how does this sable gene breed
on after so many generations?

3.  Fredo appears to me to be a sable headed red; though I would need some information on his parents to determine his gene pairing.  He is still
young, and if he is indeed a sable, red pairing, chances are the sabling on
his head will get less instead of more as he gets older.

While I don't know all the dogs in Armas pedigree, the dog that pops
out at me as the dog which carried on the blackheaded tri gene  is Windyle Elegance, who I am assuming is a littermate to Windyle Extravagance, brought here to the US by Tim Mathieson, and being a blackheaded tri, I would assume that Elegance would be as well.

I also attach Armas pedigree for you to see. (It is an Excel file.) I've
added there the colours I know but I can not be sure of some older dogs
and I don't know them all so there are some colours missing.

Thank you for all your help, this is very fascinating and interesting!

All the best,
Taija
Corrach Pembroke Welsh Corgis
http://www.pp.fi/neittamo/corgis/
<taija.potsonen@sonera.com>

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