Blue and Double Dilute Puppies!

My Steel Blue Bitch Gypsy decided to go into a silent heat at 18 months. Unfortunately the only one who noticed was my young powder blue male Rebel. At 9 months he decided it was time to heed natures call. Whoops!! This accidental litter whelped on February 10, 2001 produced six pups. Three Blues, and three pups of an unusual color. They neither looked blue nor liver but rather a mix of both. They appear "Frosted" and are quite beautiful. We are theorizing that they are what is known as "Double Dilutes". In other words they not only received two copies of the blue gene, one from their dam Gypsy and one from their sire Rebel, making them Blue dilutes, but they also received two copies of the Liver gene from each parent making them Livers as well. Rebels dam had three liver littermates so it is very plausible that she not only carries the liver gene (we already know she carries the blue gene since she's thrown two to six blues in each litter) but has passed both the liver and blue genes on to some of her off spring as well. On Gypsy's side her sire is from Ace Kennels who have produced blues and livers and have both color genes running through their lines. This picture of the six pups was taken when they were merely hours old.

Again only hours old you can see two of the Frosted pups coat color quite clearly. It will be interesting to see how they develop over the next 8 to 10 weeks. Their coats are truly silver and tan with a sheen or frost to it at the same time.

The only female in the litter, a blue. Gypsy carries the white spotting gene which is highly erratic. This white female, one of the blue males, and two of the frosted pups also carry the white tail tip factor. Gypsy and all of her littermates had white tipped tails as well. Once full grown the white tip normally is covered by darker fur on the tail. This picture was taken the day after they were whelped.