Unusual coloring on a puppy

Discussion in 'Labrador Breeding & Genetics' started by Abbyelizabeth, Aug 19, 2017.

  1. Abbyelizabeth

    Abbyelizabeth Registered Users

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    I recently bought a lab puppy. His mother is pure chocolate lab and his father is a white lab. The puppy however looks like a white lab but has yellow by his feet, ears, and tail. As well as his eyes are a green/blue color and his nose isn’t the usual black that you’d see with white labs,it’s more of a tan/pink. Everyone is telling me that he’s not a lab and that I should do genetics on him to find out for sure.
     
  2. edzbird

    edzbird Registered Users

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    Hello & welcome. A "white" lab IS a yellow lab - just a shade lighter. I think it's common to have darker "points". A brown/pink nose could indicate a Dudley - does he have any black pigment at all, like around his eyes? His breeder papers/pedigree will tell you he is all lab. Pay no attention to what others say. He looks adorable. What's his name?
     
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  3. Beanwood

    Beanwood Registered Users

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    Hi and a warm welcome to the forum! :) Your pup sounds like he is a yellow pup. Maybe although mum was chocolate she could have been carrying a yellow gene....what colour was the father? :). You could always ask the breeder, or check the papers your pup came with.
     
  4. leejane

    leejane Mum to the Mooster

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    Hi,
    I couldn't pass any judgement on your lab, but from your avatar he looks lovely, as long as he is happy and healthy I wouldn't worry about anything else. Would you gain anything in particular from doing genetic testing?
    Hopefully he will be a loving and healthy pet, maybe just with some markings or colouring you weren't expecting, which could well change over time anyway.
     
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  5. Snowshoe

    Snowshoe Registered Users

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    Did you just get him and he's only about 8 weeks old? Their eyes still look blueish then. Yellow or greenish eyes happen too, especially in a dudley, and in chocolates, at least as far as I've seen. It would mean that the puppy would be faulted in a conformation show (really, with those colour eyes probably not even worth contemplating conformation) but not that he is not a purebred.

    ARe your puppy's eyelids a tan/pinkish colour too? Then he might be a dudley. They are NOT duds, as the word might lead some to suppose, but perfectly lovely puppies. Being a dudley also means they can't show, same as wrong eye colour, but otherwise they are Lab puppies through and through.
     
  6. SwampDonkey

    SwampDonkey Registered Users

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    He looks like a champayne Labrador or a Dudley like the others have suggested. they have light eyes and pink noses. My friend has a champayne Labrador. His name is Charlie and has the Nick name of champayne Charlie around the park.he's all Labrador just very pale with pale eyes and a pinky nose.
     
  7. Snowshoe

    Snowshoe Registered Users

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    In the US and Canada a dilute yellow is often called Champagne. Some people here would argue any dilute is not pure Lab. Is champagne used the same way in the UK?
     
  8. Oberon

    Oberon Supporting Member Forum Supporter

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    Dilute yellows (Dudley) are definitely pure Labradors. They just have two chocolate alleles rather then one or two black ones. They have no genes that are not routinely found in the normal purebred Labrador population.

    People don't breed them deliberately if they're breeding for show, as a lack of black pigment in a yellow is a fault. But they're still Labradors.

    AbbeyElizabeth, if that puppy in your avatar is your puppy then he actually does not look like a Dudley to me - he looks like a normal yellow Labrador with black pigment round the eyes. Can we have some more photos? :)
     
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  9. Snowshoe

    Snowshoe Registered Users

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  10. Oberon

    Oberon Supporting Member Forum Supporter

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    Ok, sorry, my misunderstanding :) I thought that you were using the term 'dilute yellow' to mean Dudley (yellow with chocolate) when of course you meant it to mean 'yellow with the silver gene'. In that case, dilutes (any dog with silver genes) are not considered to be purebred Labradors in Australia.

    We don't use any term to describe dilutes (silver) as they're not recognised. I've never seen one in the flesh.

    I was just talking about yellows with choc - they are regarded as purebred here (as I'm sure they are in Canada too).
     
  11. Snowshoe

    Snowshoe Registered Users

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    LOL, Labs only have three recognized colours and still we can get mixed up. It must be a nightmare in breeds with more colours, and spots and patches and more than one colour in one dog. :)

    I have only seen dilute chocolates, which are called Silver here. All I have seen were very Weimy looking, except one. The one really looked like a bench bred Lab. Here dilute black is called Charcoal and it really does look grey, very dark grey. To complicate things other breeds call this Blue. Dilute yellows are often called Champagne but since yellows come, legitimately as per standard, in very light shades I might have seen one and not known it. Especially since a breeder near me does deliberately produce dilutes.
     
  12. Tracey D

    Tracey D Registered Users

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  13. Aitch

    Aitch Registered Users

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    How does all this work out for red labs and their variants? Amber is mostly yellow but with red ears and some red on back and tail. Her papers say she is yellow.
     
  14. Boogie

    Boogie Supporting Member Forum Supporter

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  15. Teller's mom

    Teller's mom Registered Users

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    I'm late to the party here but like others have said, based on eye and nose color it sounds like your boy is most definitely a Dudley. They are extremely common in yellow + chocolate pairings and why you often see breeders pair yellow with yellow (any variation of hue), yellow with black, and black with chocolate but rarely - at least in the States - chocolate with yellow. This isn't commonly done here because as mentioned Dudleys are an automatic DQ in the show ring and there aren't an abundance of working line chocolates, most are black or yellow. Oddly enough over here the really pale 'white' yellows are only really produced by those in the conformation world, I've never seen a super light yellow in the field but I'm sure one exists somewhere; I've heard it theorized that this is because a nearly white dog would stand out much more than a darker one in the field and thus be a detriment while hunting waterfowl, don't know if there's any truth in that. There's nothing wrong with your boy being a Dudley unless you were planning on showing him. With the amount of people breeding labs I've seen very few who would score well in a show ring, including my own boy. As long as he has his health clearances and is happy I wouldn't worry a jot!

    http://www.woodhavenlabs.com/yellows.html
    Here's another link detailing the shades of yellow and range coat colors.

    Yellow labs are highly variable in color, as Pippa's great article discusses and can range from nearly white to a lovely ruby red almost as dark as an Irish Setter. Most yellows sport a gradient of color. Not patches, spots or 'points', mind you, but areas that are slightly lighter or darker, depending. Lighter areas on the shoulder blades are quite common and are sometimes dubbed 'angel wings'. They can also have a 'chinchilla effect' wherein the hair shaft is a different color at the base or tip. Teller has a ton of variation in his coat and his color can look totally different just based on the light.

    [​IMG]
    Here he looks rather light.

    [​IMG]
    Whereas here, he looks considerably darker. You can also see the differences in shading.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    So, it is normal to have a yellow whose coat ranges the spectrum from super light to almost dark enough to be considered 'red'. Don't put stock in what people say, 95% of people are terrible at identifying dog breeds. For example when my ex boyfriend's Pointer (he's liver and white) was a pup people came up and asked if he was a Dalmatian, Springer Spaniel, GSP, hound, etc. Likewise people have mistaken Teller for a yellow pit bull and a Golden Retriever.
     
  16. Aisling Labs

    Aisling Labs Registered Users

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    Hi, new here but thought I'd join in....hope it's okay without a formal introduction?

    From the profile photo, your puppy doesn't look like a "dudley" to me. A "dudley" is a dog with thoroughly pink pigment (pads, nose, eye rims).

    The light eyes are normal just like a human baby may have blue eyes which change to dark as they mature.

    When a breeding of a chocolate to a yellow results in a yellow puppy, it simply means that the chocolate had a hidden yellow gene. What the yellow parent carries as a hidden gene determines the pigment color.

    So a yellow dog is BBee or Bbee (black pigmented yellow). The puppies get one gene each from their parents, so a Bbee puppy is yellow with black pigment (the large B cancels the small b) but a bbee puppy is yellow with chocolate (or liver which is what chocolate labs were first called) pigment.

    So, your yellow puppy inherited a small e from each parent (the chocolate was Ee or it would have been a yellow). And if the nose and eye rims are not black, then your puppy is a bbee....chocolate pigmented yellow. As long as it is not "thoroughly lacking pigment" the non-black nose is a "fault" and not a disqualification.

    And by the way, your puppy is adorable.
     

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