LIZZIE

Here's a recent short note from Donna who along with husband Dr. Robert are the guardians of their Vinlands Elisabeth. In a few days (August 15, 2015) this year's Icelandic Sheepdog litter will be six months old. Wow! That's hard for me to believe. I'm going to try and post recent six month old photos of all six puppies in the next few days.

I've been wondering if I should repeat this breeding. The puppies from this litter are gorgeous - imo. Should I?

"Here are a few current pictures of the little girl.  She continues to grow like a weed.  I'm very pleased with her. Please fill free to use any you wish for your blog."

 

Lizzie looks like she is going to have a lot of sable on her back.

When a tan shaded dog has lots of black hairs mixed in with any of the tan shade colors from cream, wheaten, beige, tan, yellow, yellow gold, gold, red gold, red, etc., I call the resulting black hairs "sable".

Sableing should not be confused with tricolor. Tricolor dogs can be either black & tan with white or chocolate & tan with white. The gene for black & tan (and chocolate & tan) is called the at-gene. Dobermans, Rottweilers, some German Shepherds, Welsh Terriers, Airedale Terriers, etc. have two at-genes and therefore are black & tan.

 

Icelandic Sheepdogs also have Irish spotting genes so they also almost always have some white on their bodies usually on their feet, sometimes up their legs, on the tips of their tails, often as collars or half collars, as blazes, forehead "stars", white bellies, etc.

Icelandic Sheepdogs often have at least three colors. Lizzie has three colors. Tan. Chocolate. White. She has some chocolate hairs because she has two b-genes which turn any black hairs into chocolate-brown hairs. Her sister Tully in Oregon has only one b-gene so her black hairs are really black. She is also a three color dog.

Technically only dogs that have two at-genes and are therefore either black & tan with white or chocolate & tan with white are actually referred to as "tricolors". I know how confusing that is. Three colors is not the same as tricolors. Oy!

We're about to have a thunderstorm here which means I could lose my satellite connection and anything I've typed so far so I'm posting this now.