Color Disqualifications

i'm one of a few that believes colour means squat in working breeds. albino is lack of colour.. thats a mutation that causes other health problems.... so it SHOULD be faulted and documented when it shows up in registered litters so it wont happen again.... along with other colours that cause health issues like deafness or blindness etc.

but i dont show dogs and dont intend to start. i like a good hard working dog and dont care about his colour.... as long as he brains and brawn.... i think a liver coloured GSD is just as pretty as a sable or black and tan, and i like the white ones too... but that colour was voted out even though it supposedly was quite common... but i dont know much about the history of the white shepherds.. that was something i learned here on the board.
i also think silver labs are very pretty and dont see why a silver one couldnt retrieve just as well as a black, chocolate or yellow lab.... but it matters in the show ring.


ETA
but i understand that unscrupulous breeders jack up the prices on odd colours just to dupe people into believing they are worth more because they're odd.. yeah thats dumb.,..

I too believe that color means squat to working ability, but the point is that most of these "color only" breeders are not breeding for anything besides the color. My breed, Border Collies, are bred to work stock, and color is of no consequence. A good dog can't be a bad color! It just seems to me that so many of these new "fad" colors are showing traits that may indicate crossbreeding. Ergo, they are not purebred. Some piebald Dachshunds look part beagle, those merle poodles had heavier heads and higher earsets ala Aussie perhaps? Some breeders may like a mutant color, and if they strive to breed it into a strong, healthy bloodline, more power to them. My beef is those people breeding for one trait, and one trait only. In regards to poodles, some breeders I've met over the years have been striving to breed good specimens of some of the more uncommon allowed colors, such as silver and brown. One breeder told me that certain colors seem to have other traits in association with the color, such as silvers not having good coat, and browns being coarsely built. Not all dogs, but a great many. White Boxers are supposed to have a higher incedent of deafness, and the ones I have met all have terrible allergies.Sometimes there is a reason why a color is not common, often a very good reason.

People have always bred unique colors in every animal.  These colors are natural mutations and people usually just breed the new color to each other to establish it in the breed/species.  I really see no problem with it.  All the colors of horses, guinea pigs, cats, dogs, etc.. were all bred from an original wild color.  Most animals start out in the wild with only the agouti coloration and all other colors showed up in captivity.  No idea why a natural occuring color should be faulted unless it's one of those few colors that causes other health problems like albino.  I have this issue with quarter horses.  They've passed rules that they can't have too much white when the paint color with white patches started in the breed.  Now we have to register these horses and all their offspring with a different registry despite being full bred quarters.  It makes no sense.  It doesn't change the animal in any way or keep them from doing their job.
 
Aren't crossbreeds unable to be registered anyway?  That would mean only natural mutations are allowed in the first place and all color restrictions would be against natural mutations.

Some colors hinder the dog in their work and that is why they have been eliminated. Some patterns are hard to see or too easy....potentially fatal in a hunting dog in the days before day glo. Ditto with sheep and the farmer....ditto the hounds chasing the game....and white is a terrible color for an estate guardian who's supposed to be able to blend into the night and thus do his job more effectively. So historical reasons beyond health are beyond some exclusions...pays to know your breed history before saying yay or nay.

 
Fun to hear different view points on this subject! Did you not know that the AQHA now allows you to register those crop-out paints? If both parents are DNA'd they can be registered. The AQHA will also register Cremellos and Perlinos now. All because of  verified parentage. Personally, I'm glad that these rule changes have come about but, just like in dogs, some people are breeding pure junk just because they are one of these double dilute colors. The theory is that mutts can't be registered, but registries are mostly on the honor system. One of my neighbors used to have a pair of Shelties. The female came up pregnant, but the puppies were all black with a little white. I've seen baby Shelties and these weren't! Besides, both parents were sables. The owner was very excited at first because he was convinced he had some "rare" Shelties. He could have registered the litter, after all he had a male and a female, and who would know if someone didn't complain to the AKC? The sire of this litter was probably the Aussie mix that was seen in the area a few months prior to the litter being born. I finally gave him a Sheltie book to read, and they gave the pups away as unregistered "maybe" Shelties. Also, now many people are registering with those new so-called registries. If they think their dog is a poodle, they pay their money, they get registration papers. Color mutations do occur, but they are not that common in dogs. Now with the advent of DNA testing, I would bet that most so-called mutations can be traced to impure breeding, but only in the first generation since we don't have a gene map for every breed.

Good reply Gina! Yes, the history and  developement of a breed is very important. Why would anybody want a black Kuvasz when the majority of livestock guardians are white. There is a reason for that light coloration, and that is why no matter in what country a guardian breed developed they're all big and mostly white. Some breeds have their color because of  a personal preference way back in history, but those breeds also proved themselves at their job.

I hesitate to weigh in on this one because I do have strong feelings on where breeding for something like color has led us and our purebreds. I don't think it's really done us any favors.

On one side of the equation, the vast majority of the explanations for color preferences in breeds are just-so stories, period - reverse engineered to enforce aesthetic judgments made in the breed's inception. Or to enforce purebred status as illustrated by the founder effect in the breed (Jack Russells are no more than 51% white because most of the original terriers were).

Livestock guardians and herding dogs can be literally any color. It really doesn't matter. Most LGDs end up being some form of white because white is dominant over everything but agouti/wild. Most of the sheep/stock they originally guarded in the European mountains are colored, unimproved types. It's pretty cool when a LGD erupts from the middle of the flock after a threat, yes, but they don't lay amongst the sheep most of the time anyway. Most of the time they lay on a prominance, where colors actually blend in better.

As an historian who's made canine and livestock history a special interest, I'd be glad to uncover the truth behind any just-so story you'd like to run by me with regard to accepted breed colors. I've never found one that didn't really come down to aesthetics. And that's where I get squeamish. If you take a working breed and add requirements strictly for aesthetics, you are risking the health of the gene pool by narrowing it unnecessarily. Not to mention reducing the potential for maintanance and improvement of the working ability in the breed.

OK, however, the reality today is that there are an awful lot of people who are breeding for no reason at all. In breeds where the working ability/aesthetic juxtaposition boat has already gone out to sea, I'd far rather see a breeder subject his or her breeding choices to the ones accepted by the peers in the breed club of his or her choice. I do realize in most breeds that means meeting conformation standards most of all.

And at this point those standards are acting to protect the breeds in question, as mentioned above. Some of the mentioned variations are dominant - merle is a good example. It is nearly impossible to produce merle from non-merle parents. By nearly impossible, I mean it's only possible through means of a lethal mutation. It's far more reasonable to assume there is some monkey business going on - if you hear hoofbeats, there's no need to watch out for zebras.

Ticking (spotting) is a non-lethal dominant mutation and can be passed on very subtly via the smallest spot or colored hair in the white of a white-marked dog. Ticking may be present in a self colored dog or a black and tan, and just not expressed, so it's really hard to weed out.

But other colors and modifiers mentioned are recessive. Colors are recessive to white, liver (bb) to black (Bb or BB), dilute (dd) to non-dilute (Dd or DD). ee yellow is recessive to Ee or EE (self) colored (Irish setter, yellow lab, or Golden retriever color), as are the self color modifiers sable and brindle.

Tan point is incompletely dominant, so can also be maintained in a "correct" line for many generations without emerging.

The flip side of recessives which start appearing in greater frequency in a population, is that it means that deliberate selection for these traits is occurring. Which brings us back to the wisdom of breeding specifically for color. If one has a line in which these traits happen to be concentrated, which has some other functional characteristic you are breeding for, I say more power to you. But it's folly to breed, say, a line of dilute colored labs just to increase the color in the breed. That's one reason Golden retrievers have such problems today compared to other breeds of retrievers.

I do live in hope that the kennel clubs will see the light and set up sensible guidelines to weed out obvious abuses, but without reducing their gene pools further. Just call me Pollyanna . . .

Edited for spelling [8|]

ORIGINAL: brookcove
Or to enforce purebred status as illustrated by the founder effect in the breed (Jack Russells are no more than 51% white because most of the original terriers were).

Actually, they should be more than 51% white.  This was because they were used for fox hunting.  They were often right in there with the fox since their job was to go into the fox den and flush it out.  On horseback with lots of chaos, baying hounds, stomping horses, terriers trying to get the foxes, and foxes trying to flee, it can be hard to tell the difference between a brown dog and a brown fox.  So, if the dog is white, its much easier to see.  Yes, the original terriers were white, but for a reason.  Many are still used for hunting today and we still need to be able to see them easily.
Brindle is a DQ on Russells because at one point, some were crossed with bully breeds to try to make better dogs for rat fighting.  They would put the dog in a pit with lots of rats and see how many it could kill.  I've never seen brindle expressed in a well bred Russell, probably because bloodlines have been established for a long time and these breeders purchased foundation stock from reputable breeders, many came directly from England.  I have seen it in a couple of BYB Russells.  Its really cute, but somewhere back int he bloodlines, there was probably some bully breed introduced. 

ORIGINAL: dstull

 Now in our gentler, kinder world breeders realize even the mismarks make wonderful pets. Traits that breeders have been trying to eliminate for generations that fall into the wrong hands are suddenly the "best"!

 
And what's so wrong about breeders not "culling" their mis-mark puppies and letting people have them as pets?
 
And you do realize that some color traits you can't eliminate? Like in Aussies, you can breed two black tris that are perfect to the breed standard and you can still get a mis-mark with a half white face or white too far back on it's back. You can't eliminate that and the puppies shouldn't be culled just because they aren't show quality. A lot of working Aussies aren't show quality and have different patterns, should they be culled?
 
I do realize what you're saying about the silver labs and blue merle poodles and designer mutts, that's stupid people, but you sound like you're saying all dogs whose color doesn't fit the breed standard are ridculous. And I don't agree with that.
 
Shiva

bottom line is this : "If someone wants it bad enough, they will pay for it"
my opinion on registries is they are just bloody useless and have caused no end of suffering for many working breeds because people take up the "HOBBY" of showing and breeding for confirmation. no offense intended but its a hobby. it was a hobby when it first started, it was a hobby for the rich/elite, and now its a hobby for anyone who has the time and money to do it. if your second rate ugly cow hocked shelty has a registered litter of puppies you can sell those puppies and the buyer can make a show dog out of one if it has the right looks to compete. working ability be damned.
the registries just keep track of names and who did what to who for how many cookies.... i am one of a few that.. if i'm gonna buy a pure bred its going to be a working breed, with working parents and a working history. i dont care if its AKC, UKC, or CKC.... which really only matters if you want to breed, show and compete... which i do neither. i also dont have pets in the sense that they lounge around, and hide when people come onto the property. their job is to guard and protect and intimidate anyone up to no good. Kaydee, in her prime, could have won a few confirmation shows, she had the looks for it, many people in the bull dog world admired her physique and agility.. but "aww gee... she has no papers... you cant show her, what a shame..."   which i translate to ME as "We dont know if your dog is pure bred or not so we're not taking a chance on you winning BIS when you might not deserve it" ...bugger that! i only care that she looks like an acts like a big bad bulldog and keeps my property and family safe.. its just a bonus that she looks good while doing it.
if i wanted to get her registered ... i'd probably do the CKC, get the vet to confirm her breed (the good lord knows he sees plenty of american bulldogs every day, he should know what one looks like without seeing registration papers) and send in the paper work.... but it would be a waste of time for me to do that. i am not interested in breeding, showing, or what ever breed club activity people do with bulldogs.  They want to know who her parents were, what blood lines? "oh wow!  Dick the Bruiser was her great grand father's  uncle!  Sign me up for the next litter!"    ...no.. get a life... 

i also want to say... breed colours have more to do with history.... i ssooooo wish my son hadnt broken my printer/scanner. i have the most amazing Dog World magazine from the 80's that features a UK museum with dogs (stuffed, yes, and donated by previous owners) that show some favourite breeds and how they looked when closed registries first came about. a lot of these dogs died in their prime because of distemper outbreaks .. so they arent all old white faced boney looking mutts. the bull terrier of yore was black and tan and looked like a tri colour staffy bull... disqualification for a staffy colour, and disqualification for the looks of a BT.. the Dogue De Bordeaux looked like a red nosed pit bull with.. CROPPED ears... inconceivable today! he wasnt jowly, wrinkly, and frog-like... he was a tight compact working dog. so were all the others.... their only downfall was an incurable disease.  but the amazing thing is they have become a time capsule for dog history and they show how far breed registries have come since then... people are only just now starting to break away from the follow the leader ideals and are now focusing more on health and ability and are putting looks last... but they get their butts chewed for it..

incidentally... no again i will say i dont agree with jacking up prices on dogs because they are a unique colour. if the clubs would STOP with the disqualifying of weird colours BECAUSE its not the standard then it would end the allure of having something that no one else can get. when its no longer taboo... then no one cares anymore. that has been proven all throughout history with a lot of things, not just dogs. if the colours arent lethal then who cares? if the dog can still work and function then who cares? if its just for preserving history... what?  form follows function. its now a high liability to have a hidden man eater monster dog guarding your property... i had a friend that was forced to put his dog to sleep because it attacked someone that ignored the Beware of Dog signs, jumped their fence and tried to run off with a couple of kittens.... these days the history is fun to remember and read about and see pictures, but the dogs need to progress with us or they're doomed to be outlawed and killed for doing their job which is now obsolete... 
and making working dogs into apartment pets is just insane. most people lack that kind of dedication to go jogging for three hours with their husky or black and tan coon hound.... and as was said before in another thread... there arent many people that own sheep... so why have a sheep dog? because its pretty?    ..please... get real. seriously, a lot of people want collies for looks and the Lassie stigma. but even Lassie lived on a farm, herded sheep and chased off wolves!! not in some apartment kept in a crate for eight hours, walked for two hours, then put back in the apartment for the rest of the night.

Black and tan is a DQ in Pits and Am Staffs.  For the life of me, I can't see WHY.  This color doesn't make any difference in working ability.

I don't have a problem with off-color dogs.  Unless there are health issues attached to a particular color, IMHO ANY color should be acceptable.  I don't think all white dogs should be bred in breeds where white is not a color standard (all white Doberman should be altered for example), but a red Husky should not be a problem pulling a sled!

i dont know if red huskies have problems with sled pulling... honestly i have no idea... i see so many reds that i thought that was a legal colour... though... i wonder if the red nose would be sensitive to the elements... you can get bad burns from the sun reflecting off the snow... so i've heard.. i live in Florida, so check that with someone who lives in snow lol
maybe i'm funny, but i like white guard dogs lol i want people to SEE my dog... so there wont be any chance of a confrontation. you know... visual deterrent and all that.
now if i was a hog hunter.... no... i would still want a white dog. brindle would blend in too well.. would be hard to tell the pig from the dog in some cases.

one thing i find odd.... when i first found out about the Irish Red & White Setter it made a lot of sense to have them red and white. the bird hunters in ireland WANTED them white so they could be seen in the heather fields (which are, incidentally, red) but... red setters are the popular thing.. in American anyway... seems last i heard the red and white was viewed as a flaw, so they have their own registry and club for red and white irish setters.... silly.... just plain silly.

The whole arguement with the Huskies isn't about color, at least not from what I've heard, it's that the Huskies we're all so used to aren't "true" Huskies as they can't do the work they were bred to do. Apparently in Alaska they're breeding what they call Alaskan Huskies(no I'm not making this up, I read it one day while I had nothing to do at work, and I had heard of them prior to reading about them. I just didn't believe they were a breed.) To me, the Alaskan Husky is just a MUTT! To anybody who looks for a pure bred dog, the Alaskan Husky would be a mutt as it doesn't fit any of the standards for Huskies. I know the idea behind it, they want a dog that will be able to do the work, but why take and breed more mutts, and yes they truly are mutts as their parents aren't the same breed and some of the time even mixed breeds. Why not just find some pure bred Siberian Huskies that aren't as fluffy or don't perfectly fit the breed standard and start breeding working dogs from them? You can breed out what was bred in to a dog, it just takes time. This way at least the dogs would be pure breds and any who can't do the work could be sold as pets. I mean, you can get a working Aussie from show lines, they just may have a little longer hair than the person wants but they can still do the job.
 
Shiva

Why not just find some pure bred Siberian Huskies that aren't as fluffy or don't perfectly fit the breed standard and start breeding working dogs from them? You can breed out what was bred in to a dog, it just takes time. This way at least the dogs would be pure breds and any who can't do the work could be sold as pets. I mean, you can get a working Aussie from show lines, they just may have a little longer hair than the person wants but they can still do the job.

All right. You've got a job to do now - supplies to move, cattle herds to trail. Both the jobs you mention take not only a "good enough" vague instinct, but abilities that are hard for someone to understand who doesn't depend on those abilities for their lives or livelihood (and usually both).

Just for the sake of maintaining a "pure breed," I would not want to depend on the so-so abilities of a dog that was not 100% bred to find trails, listen for changes in ice quality, and not only pull hard and fast but go carefully when needed. I also wouldn't want to depend on a not-quite strong or fast enough dog during a cold long run, or spend time stopping and de-icing his beautiful but not correct coat.

I'm talking about show Sibes, as you are I assume. They do run purebred Sibes up there - some people prefer them - but they are not the show dogs by any means.

And why would I do the same with an Aussie? The show Aussies and working line Aussies are so far apart now that it would be really not a reach to call them different breeds (the Border Collies are in a similar state and even further along - show dogs are considered a seperate breed by most BC people).

If I have a choice between a dog with all the natural abilities I need, and a dog that would be struggling to keep up every day, why would I choose a show dog? For one, that's assuming that the show lines are the be all and end all that defines a breed, which I definitely don't accept for working dogs that still work. For another, even if that were true, that would be taking my loyalty to a breed too far. If I'm truly not finding what I need in the breeds that are out there, then it's time to start breeding 100% for function and abandoning breed boundaries.