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Pien
Ji Shih Tzu-
Where Type Meets Temperament |
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My personal joke is: All Shih Tzu are Gold and White. This certainly isn't true, as we know, but it is more true than perhaps it should be. Sophia is a very neutral tan and white- in the horse world, I would have referred to her as being 'Liver Dun.' There is liver on the registration papers- shouldn't she register as liver and white? Absolutely not. Liver, as I found, has nothing to do with coat color and everything to do with SKIN pigment. All Shih Tzu are either basically black, liver or blue pointed ('points' being eye rims & nose). A liver dog has a liver or reddish colored nose, and no black hair anywhere- liver does not support any black pigment. Sophia is, of course, gold and white. What else? For more on how the skin pigment works, see the page on Blues. Fading: You will see many dogs in the ring that are very light gray or tan and white. Are they registered as silver and white? Usually not- usually they are (what else?) gold and white. We have another neat gene in the breed that fades color (the G series). What will start out as a darkly colored pup goes light gray in about a year. It's still gold and white or, perhaps, red and white- and for registration purposes, you can only register the pup as the color it is at the time of registration. My boy, Bob, started out deep gold and white. (Check out the difference in color from his puppy picture to his championship color!) Greying: This is different from fading. In fading the color lightens and fades, this gene changes the color to a silver as rich as the original color. The gene for this is called the Chinchilla gene (CH series). It will be a while before you know if you have this gene, they can still be close to the normal color at well over a year. Banding: This is a fairly well ignored gene series, I have not found any research on it. My boy Bob started dark gold. Then the hair started coming in light silver. Right behind that came a band of copper penny color. His coat just changes color as it grows- all the colored hair at once in bands. He is registered as gold and white, and as an adult, his gold is more tan, and he has a lot of silver (he also has the fading gene). The hair behind his ears is still gold, and that is a good place to check for the 'true' color. Brindle: Many people confuse banding and brindle. They are quite different. Banding is along the hair shaft- all change color at once. Brindle is on the skin, the colored areas are in patches of different colored hair. This can be hard to see in a grown-out coat, as the hairs mix together, but easy to see in a cut-down, whereas with banding, just the opposite is true. In a cut-down, you are unlikely to see banding in action, but on a long coat, you will see the stripes of different color that have grown out. Blue and liver are about skin pigment, and not hair color, but they are on different genes. The dog is basically black or liver (the B series), and blue (the D series) modifies either one when present. Bob, Aireona, and Mun Kee are blues (also referred to as Maltese dilute- it dilutes the base color to a blue gray) over black (vs. liver). Bob produced a blue over black (Mun Kee) in his first litter. His SKIN is blue, his coat Gold and White. In Blues, you have to look really close- they can produce VERY dark gunmetal- to the point that it looks black until you get them up against a true black or out in the sun. They don't explain that on the registration. When you see a lavender cast to the lips, it's a trigger to look very closely at the color of the nose and eye rims. There is a lot more about blues and recognizing them on the Blue Shih Tzu page. Black Tipping is when all of the colored hairs (not the white) have black tips. This is very dramatic and attractive. Dark tips on the ears are not black tipping, as the color goes to the root of the hair. Eye stripes, also are not black tipping- the color goes to the roots. The dog will always have eye stripes and dark ear tips, even after cutting. Black tipping is on body hair, and once you cut it, it is gone. One of the most stunning dogs I have seen was one JoAnn bred. It was a black mask gold with black tipping. As it grew, the coat was all gold, but at the ground was this lovely black fringe. It was so attractive! Dominance: Solid is dominant- so two Partis cannot produce a solid. Two solids can, however, produce partis, as they may well each carry a recessive parti gene, and can carry that gene for many generations. Fading is dominant, so a fading dog with Gg can produce non-fading offspring unless the fading gene is double GG, in which case it will produce only dogs that fade. Black points are dominant to liver points, so two black pigmented dogs can produce black or liver points, depending on what they carry- BB will look black pointed and produce only black points, Bb will look black pointed, but can produce liver if bred to a liver bb or another dog that carries liver. Blue dd is recessive, and pops out every now and then. This happens when your non-dilute dog carries the blue gene Dd. Non-dilute dogs that do not carry the dilute gene DD will never produce it. When you have something pop up in a litter that neither of the parents show, you know that the trait is carried on a recessive gene and that both parents carry the recessive gene. In the reverse, when you have a dog with an unusual trait that none of it's offspring carry, that is a recessive trait, and since the dog that shows the trait must carry two genes for the trait to show up, 100% of the offspring carry the gene from the dog that has the trait. Line breeding will likely pop the trait out, good or bad. It is much easier to breed out a dominant trait than a recessive one, as the recessive trait can be carried for generations before it crops up. Environmental Factors on color- just to confuse things a bit more! A friend of mine had a clear red and white girl grow a band of DARK silver gray- it then went back to red. It was so odd! The normal pattern is for the hair to band in colors like Bob did, and keep doing it, or for the body color to fade to gray mixed to some degree with the base color. Her red is clear- she doesn't seem to have the gene that grays out colors, and she doesn't continue to get color bands. Many people think that environmental factors can trigger color changes. These factors include climate, stress, and diet. Environmental changes seem to crop out once, then revert to normal. So, you see color in Shih Tzu is not an exact science- you just come as close as you can. It is best to use the birth color, as that is the underlying color, even if it grays out. |
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Copyright © Pien Ji Shih Tzu, 2001-2007 Pien Ji Puppies are only sold on Spay/Neuter contracts. For the reason for this policy, please check #8 on the Puget Sound Shih Tzu Fancier's Looking For a Puppy page!
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