I meant to say the 3 breeds thought to have been foundation dogs to our breed is the Scotch Terrier, the Skye (Clydesdale and Paisley being offshoots of the Skye) and the Old English terrier.
Attached are some Illustrations showing how off coloring in our yorkies today, may have came from dogs similar to the dogs seen in the below illustrations (Circa: mid to late 1800's)
First picture 1881 Cassell's The Book of the Dog shows a golden colored skye terrier along with the more traditional colored blue skye.
Second picture from Cassell's Illustrated Book of the Dog shows a white english terrier along with the traditional colored black and tans.
c. 1870s-1880s - "English Terriers, "Silvio," the Property of Mr. Alfred Benjamin. "Serpolette," the Property of Mr. Tom. B. Swinburne. "Salford," the Property of Sir Wm. E. H. Verner, Bart."
The last picture shows a group of Terriers from the 1860 Book of Field Sports by Henry Downes Miles, is Illustrated by DJ Watkins-Pitchford, are pictured running freely together. The caption reads:
"The Skye Terrier, The Scotch Terrier, The English Smooth Terrier, The Crossed Scotch Terrier, The Dandie Dinmont and The Bull Terrier."
Two of the 6 dogs pictured are parti colored ... The Bull terrier and the Crossed Scotch Terrier. Scotch terriers and Crossed Scotch terriers are recorded as being some of the foundation dogs in our breed.
My point being, that just because a dog looks to have the correct steel blue and tan coloring, that doesn't mean that they do not carry recessive genes from their off colored descendants. It's not until one dog who carries the recessive off color gene, is bred to another dog carrying the same recessive gene, that they will produce off colored pups.
Many, many, many generations can go by with these genes being passed down. A dog who carries a recessive off color gene, will pass that gene onto 50% of his offspring, those carrier pups will then pass that gene onto half of their offspring ... so until a line completely dies out, that gene continues to be passed on.
Genes for off color have been in our dogs since the beginning and they will continue to show up (from traditional colored breedings) in the future. The difference now is that AKC will allow off colors to be registered, but prior to the year 2000, off colored pups were kept in the closet (so to speak). |