Ruffly Speaking

If you've read this blog for any length of time, you know that one of the things that drives me the most nuts in the world of dogs is concentrating on coat and color rather than on things that relate to structure and soundness. Reaching into a litter of puppies and pulling out the fluffs and the mismarks as obvious pets and then grading the ones that are left really sets my teeth on edge. 

There is, therefore, a temptation to say that any color should be allowed in every standard, that across the world of dogs we should stop focusing on color. And I do, to a certain extent, believe that. I think if we were faced with the need to make a wholesale change in standards of all breeds – and if you think that would never happen, just go look at what's going on in the UK – I'd want to see color go first. 

However, there are some colors for which banning has at least an inkling of reasoning. Many times I am honestly not sure if the good reasoning is accidental or deliberate (color attitudes in breeds are often holdovers from old attitudes about darker colors being somehow "stronger" – think about how we describe black lines around the eyes, as "strong pigment" but brown lines would be "weak pigment," though there's absolutely no difference in the fitness of the dogs under the skin color) but a few – a very few – can be useful. 

One of those is the discouraging of blueies in both breeds of corgis. I used to breed blues (Great Danes, not corgis) and I absolutely LOVE the blue color. I would get an enormous kick out of one showing up in one of my litters. However, I would not lobby for the color to be added to the standard… YET. 

Blue in Pembrokes and the merle color often called blue in Cardigans is not the same thing. It makes me crazy, in fact, that so many breeds call merle "blue," because it's not. Merle is (basically) a black (or solid color) gene fighting with a white gene, and sometimes one wins and sometimes the other does. So the mouse-grey color of a merle dog is actually a salt and pepper of white, grey, and black hairs. It's not a blue.
 

Blue (the real blue) is also called the Maltese dilution and it's found in many animals, not just dogs. It is a recessive gene and both parents must carry it to have it expressed in the puppies. In other words, it's not the dad's fault or the mom's fault. It's always (and must be) equal on both sides.
 

The reason blue (Maltese dilute) is discouraged in so many breeds is that the color is not just a dilution of normal melanin, or a genetic quirk that only allows certain melanin pigments to show up (like happens in red or chocolate or fawn). The dog looks blue because it actually has abnormal melanin granules that clump up in the hair shafts and in the hair follicles instead of being normally spread out.
 

In a lot of blue dogs, you just have the clumpy melanin granules and he would look very weird under a microscope but that's as far as it goes. The dog is perfectly healthy otherwise. However, in some dogs – and at this point we don't know why, or what the genetic basis is – the melanin clumps enough that the hair shaft and follicle become deformed. Picture stuffing six dog toys in a nylon stocking and you've got the basic idea.
 

Where the melanin clumps have bulged out the hair shaft, the shaft can break in half and spill the melanin and its associated "stuff" (various chemicals, basically) on the skin, or the melanin chemicals can spill into the hair follicle. Those chemicals are cytotoxic; they kill cells. The result is a dog who has "hair loss" – actually hair breakage – over the blue areas and a constant low-grade infection and damaged skin where the hair loss has occurred. They're itchy and scaly and greasy and, while it can be managed pretty well with frequent bathing and salves and antibacterial treatment, it's no fun for the dog or the owners.
 

Many breeds – Danes and Weimaraners and Whippets would be great examples – have very little of this disease, called color dilution alopecia. Their blue individuals seem to do just fine, and breeders are very careful to keep it that way. However, "very little" doesn't mean "none" – the disease has been recorded in both breeds. And some breeds, like the Doberman, have CDA so widespread that it's incredibly rare to find ANY blue or fawn (which is chocolate + blue) dog without some hair loss and skin issues. The black or chocolate parents have completely normal coats but the blue or fawn puppies will begin to lose hair at a year or 18 months old.
 

Because of this disease, and because blue is always to some extent evidence of abnormal hair, where the blue (Maltese) color has not been an important part of the breed's history or where it is not widespread, many breed clubs have chosen to discourage it. They'd rather not have it become common in a breed until and unless we have some way of avoiding CDA. If and when the genetic or environmental cause of CDA is discovered, maybe some of the attitudes will relax, but at this point it's actually not a bad idea to avoid deliberately producing the color — especially in a breed where we don't have good data on CDA incidence and when you can't look at a baby puppy and tell whether it's going to have CDA. By the time it did show up the owners would be very attached and then be stuck with a lifetime of intensive management of an uncomfortable disease.

I am confident that within a decade maltese blue-related CDA will be MUCH better understood. Once we have a way to avoid expressing CDA I hope that attitudes toward the beautiful blue color will change, and we'll be able to see the gorgeous lilac cast over red, or the clear gunmetal blue, in our breed. I look forward to it!