Printer Friendly
Send this page to a friend
SABLES: GENETICS AND MYTHS
by Fred Lanting
Copyright October, 2008 -
The Concentration Series, C Locus
C alleles control the color or concentration of the tan parts of the Shepherd Dog. Newborn B&T whelps often appear all‑black until close examination reveals some silvery or tan coloring on lower legs, cheeks, eyebrows, and around the anus, often only at the vent in the case of the darker pups. The tan areas will gradually increase at the expense of the black saddle and other markings, with the process tapering off and nearly stopping at maturity. As the pup grows, the tan creeps up the forelegs to meet the widening chest and neck lighter markings, and up from the hindlegs to the haunches. Eventually, the pup that had a tiny bit of tan on brows, cheeks, and feet becomes a much lighter dog with a saddle halfway down the ribs and just barely covering the hip bones.
Bicolor dogs or saddle dogs with dark recessive modifiers do not usually change as much. Sable puppies generally start off a little lighter at birth than the shade they later develop, but much influence comes from genes at the E and C locations on the chromosomes, and the delayed development of topcoat. "Hypostatic" is like "recessive" but not necessarily on the same chromosome or locus. A sable with a black hypostatic gene (eb) or a bicolor recessive (at) or one of each may be darker at birth than a littermate without such modifiers, other factors being equal, and remain dark throughout his lifetime. A strange paradox has been reported: Dr. Michael Fox has observed that wolves start out darker at birth and get lighter for a while. Many geneticists think that wolves are probably true agoutis, whereas the GSD has probably lost that allele and has the sable gene as its most dominant one. However, I have seen wolf-GSD crosses that are almost indistinguishable from "regular" sable GSDs. The C locus governs the color of the "tan parts", as I said, whether the dog is sable or B&T. The amount of black coverage in the saddle area is determined by other factors.
Black and tan (saddle or bicolor) German Shepherd Dogs with somewhat faded points or considerably lighter hair on the inside of the legs may have, at the C locus, a "chinchilla" (fading effect) recessive making itself partially visible. The lighter those portions are, the more likely is the presence of such an allele, or even two of them (homozygous for chinchilla). In true sables, cchch would tend to give a very pale gray, light golden, or sooty‑cream appearance to the hair comprising the "tan points" or that portion of the back’s (blanket’s) guard hairs that is closer to the skin than the black tips are, the depth of color depending on interactions between other genes. The e allele is also involved in the pale solid-golden mislabeled "sables" reported by a number of observers, these dogs being actually B&T in genotype and born with a black and yellow‑gold‑tan as or even at constitution and appearance, yet losing the black by adulthood. Breeding to a solid black would not necessarily cover the effect of the chinchilla gene in the progeny, for this gene does not act on black pigment, only on phaeomelanin – tan hair. A solid black dog could easily be cchch cchch in genetic constitution with no way of your knowing except for much progeny testing. Because a solid black has no tan showing, there is no way of knowing by looking at it whether its C locus alleles are chinchilla or call for "normal" hue when allowed. A black dog with such paling genes at the C loci would not contribute color depth to tan parts of B&T offspring when mated with a saddle-marked dog, for instance. The same would be true if bred to a sable — if you don’t get strength of pigment at the C locus from both sides of the family, you could have poorly pigmented pups, even if one parent is a solid black. Also, the common claim that breeding to a sable every few generations will ensure good pigment is unscientific; keep in mind that some of the sables you might choose to use may themselves carry the chinchilla gene. So, generally speaking, if you have an otherwise excellent animal with a lack of strong pigmentation in the "tan areas", it would be advisable to breed it only to dogs of good pigment which you feel do not carry the chinchilla recessive themselves. Otherwise, there may be very little color difference between your stock and the "bargains" found in the classified section of the newspaper.
Left: The author’s Darlehn v KaditzerLand SchH3, well-pigmented daughter of two sables, but carries the B&T (saddle pattern) recessive. Right: her daughter Bolivia was sired by a B&T, but she has the same pattern alleles as does her dam.
When the GSD breed got started, there were many sables, probably far more than there were B&Ts, and perhaps some with wolf-agouti pattern as well. (In my book, you will even see a blue merle GSD from the 1920s!) What happened to the sable in the show lines, and why have the "working lines" kept so many of them? The answer to the second part is simpler, and it involves the breeder Alfred Hahn of BuseckerSchloß fame. When I visited with him, he told me how he started his kennel in 1925, and how he had a special leaning toward the "gray" dog. He showed me many photos of his past and current successes, and in most cases they were sables. Hahn had the single greatest influence on both the preservation of the sable, and on the furtherance of the "total" show-working dog of any in his long tenure. He blended the best working dog lines with the best "show" dogs. Behind the greatest "golden middle" dogs that ever lived (the Lierberg B, D, and other litters) was the BuseckerSchloß name. I knew Bodo, the hardest and most imposing GSD I’ve ever come across, and I had a Gin v. Lierberg daughter that could also eat iron and spit out ten-penny nails. They were B&Ts, but they had tough and beautiful sables in their backgrounds.
Timo and daughter Darlehn, both heterozygous sables, both with black masks.
Timo was a very popular sable, yet color prejudice contributed to his not being named German Sieger.
Most sables will start out lighter than they will later become, though there are some that show the reverse progression. It may take three years, according to van Dorssen, for a sable to develop its adult color. I’ll never forget the poor air-headed "breeder" years ago in one GSD club who put down most of her litter at birth because she thought she had "those dreaded white dogs". She had no idea that the pale newborns would most likely grow up to have the same sable coloration that the sire had!
Sable Myths
Breeders have noticed in both sables and B&Ts, that continued breeding within the one pattern or the other (such as sable-to-sable or B&T to B&T) will eventually produce many with faded pigment. This is where the misconception arises that you should breed to a sable every so many generations to enrich color. Nonsense! Fading happens in sable-sable and sable-B&T breeding, too. The real situation is that in either camp, breeders were not careful enough to re-introduce intense pigmentation, and as you have heard in other instances, if you don’t use it, you lose it. A sable will not automatically improve depth of color; in fact, if you breed to the wrong sable (or any color pattern) you can get faded pigment in your pups. However, to claim as did that German breeder, "…if, after several generations of purely sable-to-sable cross-breedings, a [B&T] combination is made, no loss of pigmentation will occur", it ain’t necessarily so. The B&T could be less than well-pigmented, and if he didn’t have better genes for producing deep pigment, especially in the phaeomelanin-influenced coat areas, you could still be taking a step backwards. Nor is that person correct when she agrees with those who surmise "that a well-pigmented B&T who has one sable parent, produces a better pigmentation" for both B&T and sable offspring. Having a sable ancestor, no matter how close, has nothing to do with it. If the dog in question is a B&T, it has NO sable in it… sable cannot be recessive to B&T, and therefore is not present to wield any influence. Those who believe it does, make no more sense than the homeopath who thinks that the "memory" of some molecules that are no longer in a bottle can influence the future contents of that vessel. To say that "The sable gene cannot lose intensity" by continuing to breed sable to sable, is totally unfounded. When one attributes good pigment in a particular dog’s pups "to his sable ancestry on the maternal side", is likewise ‘way off the mark. The dog’s well-pigmented offspring inherit "modifier genes" for richness of pigment, even some from light-colored females he may have been bred to. Improving pigment "by using a sable female or one of her black-&-brown descendants" is no guarantee, not even an indication of the direction to take. To use as an example a dog that almost everyone is familiar with, the offspring of Timo Berrekasten, that spectacular sable VA dog at the Nuremberg, Karlsruhe, Bremen, and Düsseldorf Sieger Shows, generally appear to have outstanding pigment because of much black overlay, though some could have darker color below the black portion of the guard hairs. However, it is not because he is a sable, but simply because he has such good pigment in much area. Look at his legs, and you can see the richness that is not covered up by the extensive black portions. When I first wrote this for a magazine, I said, "I would love to have a dog like that!" Then I got one: a beautiful Timo daughter who looked and acted like her sire.
Another myth is that "The dog that dominantly produces sable [homozygous]… is [also] homozygous for short hair." People in the U.S. have echoed this misconception, too, that such a sable cannot produce long-coats. There are sufficient examples that refute this; after all, science (of genetics or anything else) is based on observation and repeated experiments. There is no chemical or genetic connection between length of hair and pattern. They are on completely separate loci. You can almost as readily produce a long-coated white, sable, or solid black as you can a bicolor or saddle-marked dog. I say "almost" only because there are fewer of them around, and fewer cases of people breeding for those expressed purposes. But it is just as easy, if you locate and breed the "right" pair, as it would be to produce a solid-liver long-coat, a blue-and-tan long-coat, or any other such combination of odd coats. To say that a homozygous sable would offer "a way to at least restrict the problem with long coats" simply is not true. The Shiloh Shepherd subfamily of GSDs has many scores of examples of long-coated sables.
Another misconception is that in breeding a homozygous (pure) sable to a B&T, "50% of [the pups on average] would be homozygous for sable, and 50% heterozygous". Of course, you know that 100% of the pups would be heterozygous sables; i.e., they would all have the sable pattern phenotype, but each will carry one of the B&T’s recessive genes. None could be homozygous for either B&T or sable. The additional claim that "sable dogs are more resistant to strain [sic] than black & brown dogs" is unfounded (She probably meant "stress", but either is equally unscientific and neither is a statistically valid statement.). There is no connection between color pattern (sable vs. B&T) and working qualities. There is only coincidence — the fact that the same people who had produced sables are largely the same ones who are more into the working-sport activities in the breed. It is concurrent, not cause-and-effect. People with high-scoring sables tend to look for more sables to buy or breed.
I had a problem with some of the numerous false claims and comments made in the "paper" that had been circulated on the Internet some years ago regarding "Peculiarities seen with sable pups":
- "The weight at birth is usually …higher". Where is the data? I’m not ready to accept that without proof and reason.
- "Clearly higher vitality". I have not seen that, nor can imagine any logical reason.
- "Lower mortality during the first ten days". Nor that. I suspect the assumption is based on coincidence.
- "Higher weight when tattooed". Not among American dogs at that age, so why should it be so in Germany? No basis in science at all.
- "Less heat sensitivity…" (pups, adults, shows, trials) Maybe less black to absorb heat? Again, poor correlation; pointing the finger at the wrong cause.
- "I have never observed [light nails]". Well, I certainly have! I’ve judged and examined untold thousands of GSDs.
- "More often black spots on or below the tongue". No difference; this is inherited separately.
- "Never [light] lips or gums. (or) White hair in the ears". Purely incidental. No connection with coat color pattern.
- "Almost all sable females and many black-&-browns stemming from sables feed their pups out of their own stomach". Coincidence.
If you, reader, have also entertained thoughts along those lines, I challenge you to apply reason and reliable data to such ideas. Turn the flashlight of science and logic onto superstition and watch it disappear.
In summary, there are many misconceptions about coat color or pattern, and the supposed effects on other characteristics. The sable GSD was making a comeback in the show circles, thanks to SV & WUSV boards of directors and a recent but now-deceased SV president. It has been idolized by many schutzhund-sport-only folks and the object of adverse prejudice by many show-only fanciers, neither side having any basis in common sense or science. A good sable can contribute much to the breed, especially in the area of genetic diversity. While a GSD does not run on its hair, or bite with its pigment, good color and attractive markings help to give the breed its highly important expression and overall impression. Thus, they contribute to the all-important preservation and promotion of "Type".
« Previous Page 1 2 Next page » | Single page version
A well-respected and frequent GSD specialty and all-breed judge for many clubs around the world, with KC and other-country credentials, Mr. Lanting since 1966 has lectured on Gait-and-Structure, Canine Orthopedic Disorders, and other topics, and has judged in about 30 countries, including the prestigious FCI Asian Shows hosted by Japan Kennel Club and the KC of India, the Scottish Kennel Club, and many National Specialties in the USA and elsewhere. He has been described by a former OFA director as the world’s leading non-veterinarian authority on hip dysplasia. A dog breeder since 1945, a GSD owner since 1947, and a show judge since 1979, he has lectured at numerous veterinary schools in the USA and abroad. He is the author of “must read” books for the dog owner (see below for ordering info). Curriculum Vitae available upon request.
Announcing the new “Canine HD and Other Orthopedics Disorders” book: The expanded revision is a comprehensive (nearly 600-page), amply illustrated, annotated, monumental work that is suitable as a coffee-table book, a reference work for breeders and veterinarians, and a study adjunct for veterinary students. It is equally valuable for the owner of any breed. It covers every aspect of HD and other orthopedic, bone, or spinal disorders, and includes genetics, diagnostic methods, treatment options, and the role of environment. Your autographed copy will be mailed from the USA as soon as the appropriate amount is received and is processed. Pricing: US $68, plus $5 postage in the U.S., or ask about mail overseas. Combine orders with “The Total German Shepherd Dog” by the same author ($50 plus postage). 17 of the 20 chapters are suitable for owners of any breed.
