Dane coat color question for Liisa

Having a hard time figuring out what the heck it is, never mind the
genetics. We had a one year old Dane at the dog park yesterday. Totally
goofy and adorable, and that lethal weapon of a tail was working overtime.
It's his coat color that has me puzzled. His coat is a dark brown, darker
than fawn, lighter than chocolate (maybe a little grey mixed into the
brown?), and has black patches, like you'd see in Merle. No white patches,
but there is a distribution of white hair all over (like people having grey
hair ). Doesn't look like a fawn merle (unofficial name) because the base
is really a whole lot darker than fawn. So, what do you suppose it is, and
how did it come about?

He is a shelter dog so parentage is not known, but looks to be pretty much
all Dane (I'd guess 33-34" at the withers, 125 pounds).

Suja

"Suja" <spanaval> wrote in
news:xU_Lg.13759$SZ3.9497@dukeread04:

> Having a hard time figuring out what the heck it is, never mind the
> genetics. We had a one year old Dane at the dog park yesterday.
> Totally goofy and adorable, and that lethal weapon of a tail was
> working overtime. It's his coat color that has me puzzled. His coat
is
> a dark brown, darker than fawn, lighter than chocolate (maybe a
little
> grey mixed into the brown?), and has black patches, like you'd see
in
> Merle. No white patches, but there is a distribution of white hair
all
> over (like people having grey hair ). Doesn't look like a fawn
merle
> (unofficial name) because the base is really a whole lot darker than
> fawn. So, what do you suppose it is, and how did it come about?
>
Sounds like a seal merle! It is just like regular merle, and the base
color
is black. In this case the dog just isn't jet black, but seal aka
"bad
black". It is most likely that is it genetically heterozygous
black, and
the underlying sable (called "fawn" in this breed) can be
partially seen
"through" the black.

For some reason merling makes the hidden sable pattern more visible
than it
would be otherwise. Normal merles have pure grey coat areas, but a
seal
merle has clearly brownish patches instead of grey/silver. Black
patches
are more or less true black in both cases.

Fawn + merle would give just a fawn Dane with perhaps some merling
visible
on mask. There wouldn't be any change in the yellow coat areas. Merle
gene
doesn't add any dark patches, it only dilutes randomly some parts of
the
eumelanin (dark) coat. If you see merling all over a dog, it means
that the
base pattern allows eumelanin to cover all of the dog in the first
place so
that merle can dilute it here and there all over.

This Italian Greyhound is a seal:
http://www.kolumbus.fi/sarakontu/koirat/koiravarit4/italianoseal.jpg

It is "very" seal, and in good light it really looks more
like dark brown
than real black. Just the face, where the black mask is, is jet black.
Most
seal dogs are not this clearly brownish but much blacker. And if this
was
merle, the paler patches would be some shade of brownish beige and not

grey/silver.

And this Estonian rescue is a saddle merle:
http://www.kolumbus.fi/sarakontu/koirat/koiravarit2/varjumerlesat.jpg

As you can see, merling is visible just on saddle and all the tan coat

areas are just as tan as they would be without merle gene.

Liisa
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