# Black GSD with a White GSD... Results?



## Anthony8858 (Sep 18, 2011)

If you were to breed a white GSD with a black GSD, what would the expected results be?

In most other breeds, the dogs could possibly produce puppies with a mixture of both colors.

However, I suspect that you CANNOT get a black and white GSD.

Is this true?


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## Kaiser2012 (Mar 12, 2012)

This is what happens with a BYB cross of german/american, black/white:

This is Sako

sako by jsnail17, on Flickr

And this was out of the same mother, different father (or maybe it was vice versa...either way, one parent of Sako passed away, so they found a new dog to replace it for continued breedings):

This is Polar


polar by jsnail17, on Flickr


NOTE: The first breeding, which produced the silver sables, also produced regular sables (tan/cream), and I believe a black


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## abakerrr (Aug 8, 2008)

Right. White is a masking gene modifer which essentially covers up the dogs real genetic color (whether that is sable, black, bi, black & tan, etc)... Such is why the nose leather and eye rims are typically black on a white GSD. If you had a white dog whos genetic base color was liver (which is really uncommon, but could in theory happen), the nose and eye rim color would be chocolate brown (not to be confused with faded black pigment that can create a 'snow nose' effect). There's no way of knowing what a white GSDs true base color is without knowing the lineage or genotyping it's DNA.

Black is recessive so depending on the base color of the white dog, you could produce white puppies and also whatever 'standard' color the white parent carries for. You couldn't produce black and white GSDs by mixing the two. You can produce panda shepherds that come down from Franka v Phenom which i believe have the Irish spotting gene (someone correct me if I'm mistaken).


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## Wolfgeist (Dec 4, 2010)

Breeding a black and white together would mostly produce whatever colour the white parent is masking, I believe.


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## Anthony8858 (Sep 18, 2011)

So interesting. 
Thank you for responding. 


Sent from my iPhone using PG Free


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## Typhoon (Aug 16, 2012)

> However, I suspect that you CANNOT get a black and white GSD.
> 
> Is this true?


Yeah, that's true.

It's been a long, long time since I looked into all this, but basically what I remember is that white is what is called a "dominant recessive" gene. And -- again -- what I recall that means is that while it's rare, once you get it, that's all you get, which is why if you breed two whites, white puppies is all you'll ever get. And if you breed a white to anything else, what you'll get is some whites...and some of the something else.

I knew a guy one time years and years ago who tried for quite some time to breed himself some black and white German Shepherds doing just as you suggested.

Never happened. Never will.


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## Sunflowers (Feb 17, 2012)

Default to black and tan


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## shiksa (Oct 2, 2011)

my dogs have produced a similar color to Sako, that awesome wolf mask, the father has been bred to a couple other females and never produced it, but he does with just one of my girls. It must be a recessive masking gene they both have to carry.


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## gagsd (Apr 24, 2003)

Typhoon said:


> Yeah, that's true.
> 
> It's been a long, long time since I looked into all this, but basically what I remember is that white is what is called a "dominant recessive" gene. And -- again -- what I recall that means is that while it's rare, once you get it, that's all you get, which is why if you breed two whites, white puppies is all you'll ever get. And if you breed a white to anything else, what you'll get is some whites...and some of the something else.
> 
> ...


White is recessive. Both parents must carry it to get white puppies.
White is also a masking gene rather than an "actual" color. So the white dog might genetically be sable, blk/tan, bi or blk. THAT will determine the puppy colors unless the black dog also carries white masking gene since black is most recessive color (per OP's scenario).

I see an awful lot of registered dogs that I would bet money on had some other breed mixed in to produce the nifty colors and patterns.


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