.What Color is That Border Collie?
The Fundamental Body Colors of the Border Collie
The Border Collie comes in a variety of pleasing colors. The dominance triats of each of the colors is dependent on the blend of genes each parent contributes to the breeding. The color that comes most immediately to mind when the Border Collie breed is mentioned is the black and white dog. While black and white is indeed the most common Border Collie color, blues, reds, chocolates, and merles, all with or without the white trim and possible tri colors exist. The breed standard does not state a preference for any one color or trim combination over another.
The genetics of coat color inheritance in Borders is not as simple as it is in Australian Shepherds owing to the additional number of phenotypical coat color crosses and the effect of the dilute colors of blue and red (chocolate, like black, is not a dilute color and is recessive to black). But, some basic rules apply. Breed a black and white dog to another black and white dog and most of the puppies will be black and whites. Like in Aussies, if one of the parents of the black and white dogs being bred was, say a blue, one or some of the pups might wind up being blue. But unlike Aussies, a blue dog is distinct from the incompletely expressed black that creates a blue merle. Though the same incomplete expression of black will indeed result in blue merle Borders. So, the terms blue and blue merle must be carefully applied when talking about Border Collies.
You can be sure when you see a blue merle Border Collie that one of its parents was also a blue merle.
You can be sure when you see a dilute color dog that both of its parents carried, but not necessarily expressed, the dilute color.
Interestingly, although the same excessive white patterning that occures in Aussies also occures in Border Collies from merle to merle breedings, neurological deficiencies are rare, primarily because Border Collie breeders simple do not breed merles to merles.
Eye color in Borders is somewhat expressive of coat color. A blue male with brown eyes, bred to a black and white, brown eyed female can produce a grey or blue- eyed puppy.
Genetic inheritance is not entirely predictable however. A litter of 10 puppies that should have a 75 percent occurance of the dominant coat color could have 8 out of 10 puppies born with the recessive coat color.
What follows are some coat color crosses and the resulting puppy colors.
Two black and white parents produced several black puppies and one blue pup (both the black parents are carries of the dilute color).
Blue merle and black parents produced both merles and blacks.
Blue and black parents produce blue, black, and red pups (obviously, the one of the parents of the blue dog was red, or carried red and the other parent -- the black dog -- also carries some dilute color).
Black and chocolate parents produce only black pups. The pups are all chocolate carriers, but can't express the recessive chocolate color. If one of the pups is then bred to another chocolate dog, many of the pups should be chocolate, some will still be black.
Black dog who carries the dilute blue bred to a chocolate will produce all black pups.
