Harlequin Litter Color Narrative with Photos
by Arlene Scarbrough of Scarbrough Fair Great Danes
Merles
have a gray base color that can range from a dark gun metal gray to a very light
silver. They have torn black
patches over their entire bodies and on their faces.
They may also have white on their toes, feet, and/or chest.
Boston merles
have a gray base color that can range from a dark gun metal gray to a very light
silver. They have torn black
patches on their gray base color. They
also generally have a white collar, a white face blaze, white muzzle, white
chest, white front legs, white rear stockings, and a white tail tip.
Just as with the mantles, the white markings can vary considerably, i.e.
half a white collar, a wide collar, a narrow collar, no collar, white partially
up the front legs, no face blaze, etc.
Merlequins
have a white base color with torn gray, instead of black, patches on their
bodies. Their torn gray patches
frequently have black speckles inside them.
Pot
bellied
pig
named
Robin.
Piebalds
have a white base color. They
generally have a smooth patch of either merle or black around the left eye and
ear and another around the right eye and ear.
If their patches are gray, they generally have black speckles within
them. They also generally have a
very few fairly large patches on their bodies.
Their patches of color tend to be oval and smooth around the edges, as
compared to the torn patches on harlequins and merles.
When these dogs have black patches, some novice breeders confuse them
with harlequins, since they are white in base color with black patches.
If you were to see two dogs with their heads sticking out of a dog house
and one was a mantle and the other was a piebald with black patches, you could
easily assume your were looking at two mantles.
When they stepped out of the house you would be surprised to see
that one had a nearly white body.
Whites
are almost all white. They may have
a few tiny black or merle patches or merle patches with black speckles on their
bodies, but generally have little to no color on their heads. Their noses are generally solid pink to mostly pink with some
black, although they can have solid black noses. These dogs are 90-99% white.
They are frequently deaf and they generally have distorted vision with
oddly shaped pupils or they are completely blind.
Albinos
totally lack pigment. Their only
color is white. They have no color
whatsoever on their bodies. Their
noses and eyes are pink. I have
only seen one true albino in thirty years of breeding, and it was not in one of
our litters. Due to my total lack
of experience, I will not go into any more detail about their traits. Sorry, but since we’ve never produced an albino, I have no
photo to post.
Mixed Color
Breeding
Harlequin bred
danes should be bred to other harlequin bred danes (harlequins, mantles, blacks
or merles, if the breeder will breed merles) or to black out of black breeding.
We will address breeding merles on a new page of our website called
“controversial topics” that is currently in the development phase.
If and when the
harlequins, mantles, blacks (out of harlequin breeding) and/or merles are bred
with fawns, brindles, or blues, all sorts of strange colors can result.
You can also get some of these colors if you double on dogs that are pure
color bred for generations, but whose pedigrees way, way back contain mixed
colors. We will show you two danes, a boston fawn and a fawnoquin
that came from doubling on an imported mantle bitch that was pure color bred for
many generations.
Now for a little fun! Below are four pictures of four different litters. Can you identify the colors of the puppies?
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Your feed back is always welcome.
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