I asked this identify a long time ago without answering.
This is a solid red doberman.
Or what should be called a real red doberman.
The dogs normally called red dobermans are actually liver and tans.
The parents of this puppy were a black and tan and a liver and tan “red” doberman.
This red coloration exists in both German or standard pinschers and miniature pinschers. The German or standard pinscher is one of the ancestors of the doberman. Both of these “lesser” pinschers also come in what is called “stag red,” which is sable.
We have little standardization in describing dog color. A red golden retriever is a very different color in terms of its genotype from a red doberman. Liver and red are very distinct colors in the gun dog culture, although I’ve had some bad discussions with people trying to explain to them that a liver flat-coated retriever is the same color as a chocolate Lab.
[…] The Answer. […]
Don’t know what you mean by “real” red. The black and tan gene is recessive, puppy got one from each parent, so the puppy is black and tan (or, liver and tan), regardless of whether or not the color break is visible. It may become more discernible with age, or maybe not if the overall liver color and the tan markings are visually identical.
Read red to me is e/e– the color of a golden retriever.
This puppy appears to be a real red.
I don’t consider red dobermans or most red border collies to be real reds. They are liver.
Liver dogs have a genotype that allows brown color to appear on the coat and skin (b/b). It’s possible to have a dog that is e/e and b/b. That’s when you get yellow labs with brown lips and noses. All vizsla are that color.
Red dobermans as they are normally understood aren’t really red. They are liver and tans.
Red is the color of a golden retriever or an Irish settger (e/e). Border collies that are this color are called “Australian reds.”
Dogsblood, the black and tan gene (a’t’) is recessive, only on the agouti locus. The red gene – ‘e’ – is recessive on the extension locus. When paired with a second ‘e’, the paired recessives of ‘e/e’ are epistatic to all those on the K and A loci and produce what some of us refer to as ‘real reds’.
The Cavalier Spaniel breed provides an easy example to see that full red coloration (complete absence of black) is indeed recessive to black and tan. You will see that two black and tan dogs, each carrying ruby(red), will commonly and predictably produce both black and tan and ruby pups.
I don’t know what you are getting at with the idea of a ‘color break’? Maybe you can explain, but it is obvious to me that this puppy is not black and tan. The black and tan phenotype requires an a’t’/a’t’ pairing on the agouti locus, and at least one E on the extension locus.
This puppy is e/e on the extension locus – making it red. No E is there. It is probably, as well, a’t/a’t’ on the agouti locus. In Cavaliers it would be called ‘dudley nosed’ because it also has liver colored leathers, due to the influence of the brown locus.
Kary
I’m not an expert on either color genetics or Dobie color genetics, but do own a red breed that is E/E as well as B/B. Color in this case is determined by Ay. Dobies can be d/d, as this one may be, which can disguise the effects of e, b, and at (I can’t put a superscript on my keyboard). I’m not arguing with your basic point about Dobie color, but I think you may be using a very broad brush with respect to red itself.
The tan marks are a variant of the agouti gene as you stated. But it’s that gene with the liver. The dilution genes produce the isabella and blue dobermans. Isabellla is liver and tan dilute, and if it lacked the agouti variant, it would be the same color as a weimaraner. Blue is black and tan dilute, and if it lacked the agouti variant it would be the same as the nonstandard blue weimaraners or charcoal Labradors– and the gray Newfoundland.
I actually am using a very specific word for red. Red is not liver.
In herding breeds and dobermans, they have taken the word for liver, which is chocolate or bronze in Newfoundlands, and turned that into red, which to me is isn’t liver at all but an e/e.
I’m being deliberately specific with my language. Liver and tan is not red. But vizsla colored is red.
Isabella should not be called fawn in dobermans, but I see that a lot,too. Isabella is dilute liver and tan.
This dog also looks like a dilute to me.
The mother has fawns and greys in the line, and greys are dilute black, so … too bad there is no adult picture.
It might be. The mother looks like she might be a carrier of dilute.
I have occasionally read geneticists, when conversing with breeders, use the phrase ‘tan based red’ to indicate the e/e phenotype that we see in Golden Retrievers, Irish Setters, and most solid whitish looking dogs – in an extremely diluted form of course.
I like the term real red, and it makes me nuts when breeders use the term ‘red’ to describe a b/b dog . . . . but they do, so then it becomes a matter of figuring out how to converse with terms that we can all get along with.
To my knowledge, Dobies don’t have the agouti gene that would effect red (or liver) color — was referring to my breed on that, with Ay involving banding as well. Whatever, from what I’ve poked into, once color genetics start getting complicated, as with the dilution gene in Dobies, all sorts of things can happen, i.e. you can’t just say that d/d produces Isabella, period, end of discussion.
Vizslas are, technically, b/b, or “brown”, the basis of what is referred to as liver in other breeds. Sometimes terminology is in the eye of the beholder.
Vizslas are b/b e/e. That’s not liver. I call that brown skinned yellow or brown-skinned red.
You’re missing the point on liver dogs and black dogs. A liver dog with the b/b that has some variant of the agouti gene will have chocolate brown where a normal sable will have black. You can see tollers that are sable in this way.
Homozygous dilution produces those Isabella or weimaraner color or charcoal labs or gray Nwfoundlands. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand.
Agouti is a locus. On it the alleles identified are a’y'(sable), a’w'(wolf sable, often called agouti), a’t'(black and tan, including creeping tan), and ‘a’ (recessive black).
Dobies are mostly all a’t’/a’t on the Agouti locus. They do have that agouti gene.
Kary
Well said!
http://www.prickeared.com/2011/06/red-viking-dog/
Dobermans have about the same color as this dog, just a different type of agouti.
The liver sable German shepherd has a different variant of the agouit gene from a “red” doberman. But it’s brown banding, instead of black.
Kary — I misspoke, keying on the Ay in my own breed rather than the entire locus.
Retrieverman — Different breeds have different conventions for what a given color is called colloquially. These conventions may or may not have the same genetic references, it’s just what they are. What you prefer to call something is irrelevant in that context. And the effect of dd is not at all difficult to understand, but how that might relate to other genes effecting coat color might be.
1. I am a writer. Language is important to me. I agonize over lazy colloquialisms– like calling the wapiti an elk, even though no one knows what a wapiti is, or the Canadian penchant for calling a Richardson’s ground squirrel a “gopher.”
2. We need specific language so that people can understand concepts. If people insist on calling liver dogs reds, it causes unbelievable confusion when we’re trying to have a discussion about the genetics.
I had a bad debate on a youtube video with a moron who insisted that liver flat-coats were not the same color as chocolate labs.
It’s all liver to me.
And I have had endless debates with people in my breed over the fact that white spotting on the S locus has nothing whatsoever to do with blonde banding on the A. Your flat coat people might learn to look at the noses :-D I’ve found, at least with most dog people, that it doesn’t matter how specific the language is if the underlying concept is misunderstood. Cynically speaking, that misunderstanding serves to justify traits that might not be considered desirable. Optimistically speaking, sometimes the simple is too easy to be believable.
Another thing you’re going up against is history. I just did a little Google search (killing time during an incredibly boring football game), and came up with “In fact, calling a dog ‘liver’ one or two hundred years ago could mean any color from yellow to red to liver or brown.” Author unknown. But there’s a lot of that in dogs, i.e. descriptions and/or concepts based on archaic terms or levels of understanding. To me, the persistence of the term “45 degree shoulder layback”, an anatomical impossibility in most dogs, is more disturbing than different names for the same color, or same names for different colors.
Liver in retrievers meant both liver and the yellow to red (e/e) color.
Chesapeakes are the only breed in which brown skinned yellow to red (e/e/b/b) and liver exist in the same breed. It’s somewhat difficult to tell what you’re looking at with some liver and some dark real reds.
I really don’t care about history. History just causes more confusion. We need to simplify and specify what we mean.
That they were ignorant in the past doesn’t mean that we should carry on with their ignorance.
I was told that a long time ago, a Saluki breeder crossed a ‘red’ Dobe with a Saluki to intensify the red color. Obviously, this not work.
In Salukis, liver is called chocolate.
I laughed when I read a Chesapeake Bay retriever fancier crossing his “red” (liver) chessie with an Irish setter and getting 9 black puppies born from the mating. This was in the early 1900’s.
We’ve had some experience with a strain of Lab/Chessie crosses (F1 & F2) and they were all black dogs with white markings. Surprisingly, they were also rangier than either parent breed.
Actually, the red in the red nosed APBT and others is simply the lack of black malin. All dogs have red noses, most covered by black malin. Dogs left in the sun light will often partially sun bleach the black malin which shows the red. The actual color of red heads in humans is known to be brunette (missing the black malin).
Haha wow. I suppose I should have guess this pup with ease! But I didn’t. =b
I’ve only recently started studying the genetics of dogs and how they work. I’m still very much a n00b and never knew these type of doberman could pop up.
There’s actually a BYB’r in Alberta who produces these type of doberman. He seems to think they’re fawn (isabella) however.
It’s impossible to say if they’re completely purebred since none are registered.
You can see some of the “real red” pups as adults on his website: http://riversidedobermans.piczo.com/
Click the “pictures with new families #2″ link.
[…] be a weird color tone to the photos… Her markings are very pale. Perhaps she's in part a "real red"? __________________ […]