 |
| Image is from Flickr.com under a Creative Commons license |
This is Dora, a silken windhound. The breed resembles a small borzoi or a whippet with a long coat. This makes sense as the two major ancestors of the breed are, in fact, the borzoi and the whippet. The colors seen in the breed are also just as varied as those seen in these two ancestors. So, what's her genotype?
To begin, Dora is most likely atat tan pointed. The pale spots over her eyes and on her cheeks appear too well-defined to be graying from old age and the location fits with what is to be expected from tan points. They also appear to be tinted ever so slightly cream.
In combination with the above, the red in Dora's coat must be extremely diluted to appear so white. As such, Dora is likely cpcp extremely pale red.
Dora also has a lot of white on her. This is caused by the Spotting locus, and because of how little color she has on her, I suspect she is swsw extreme white piebald. It could also be possible that she is spsw (piebald carrying extreme white) with a lot of modifiers increasing the amount of white, but I find it more likely that she is swsw.
Last, but not least, Dora has ticking spots on her legs. Ticking does not appear to be all that common in the silken, so I suspect that Dora is most likely Tt ticked.
So, that's atat cpcp swsw Tt or extreme white piebald black and tan with extremely pale red and ticking.
I have a wonderful Silken Windhound marked much like Dora except the spots are brindle-probably red brindle although I'm not one hundred percent certain. I'm still learning all this... He has always had a little ticking on his legs. He will be a year old in May and suddenly has ticking on his nose and under his hair on his rump especially. I don't know if this ticking will manifest itself in ticking/spots on the fur any more than it has or will remain as pigment underneath. It seemed to almost show up overnight! Thanks for your fascinating blog and thanks for featuring a Silken:)
ReplyDeleteHe may get some more spots, though once he's fully grown you probably won't see too many more changes. If he does get some spots on his rump, they will likely not be very visible thanks to the longer hair there.
DeleteI'm not sure how uncommon ticking is in Silken Windhounds, I can think of a couple off the top of my head (Scirocco Dakar and Kumbaya That's Amore), who are cousins. What is Dora's registered name? Typically the ticking gets darker/heavier as the dog ages.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I've seen, there aren't a great number of silkens with ticking. However, I am far from an expert on the subject. I am aware that ticking will get heavier. Pups will be born without ticking and the spots will appear as they age. However, after maturity generally there won't be much more change. Also, the ticked silkens I have seen, including the two you mentioned, have very light ticking. Ticking that light seems to me to be seen on dogs that are heterozygous, with the heaviest ticking seen in breeds that are ticked quite often or always ticked and thus homozygous for the gene.
DeleteAs for this dog, it looks like this is the same bitch: Rubia's Fiery Perigee
my ticked dogs get darker and darker and more ticked the odler they get. .we joke it's from exertion because my heaviest tick dog seemed to get more spots the more I ran her LOL
ReplyDeleteI don't have a lot of personal experience with ticked dogs, but from what I've seen any increase in color that occurs after maturity is far slower than the changes that happened before then. In addition, it definitely varies by dog. I'll do some more searching into this.
Delete