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I have a five month old german shepherd puppy, and hes the best dog i could ever hope for. He grows too fast though!!! Part of the growing is the colour change from almost all black to, well, lighter, and i was wondering if anyone else has a shepherd with a lot of grey/white markings. A lot of his face is comming through this colour, behind his ears, and a stripe along his back, thogh the hairs have black roots and tips, and are grey in the middle. Has anyone else ever seen this colouring? becuase I havent. I'll try to figure out how to post a picture so you can see.

Our boy has a silver and black stripe down his back -- I've never seen a GSD with this either, but his mom has a lot of frosting. I don't have an online pic of him, but here are his parents:

http://www.brushcreekkennels.com/ladies/bibi.htm

http://www.brushcreekkennels.com/lovingmemory/iso.htm

Our boy's head though is very red and black -- the head looks alot like his dad.

beautiful parents!!! No doubt your boy is just as handsome!

>>beautiful parents!!! No doubt your boy is just as handsome!

Our boy is very handsome with a great temperament, but we're still working on getting and keeping him healthy...just one thing after another. Somebody gave him to my husband about 2 1/2 years ago....

That's the second website that I've seen Flick Vom Baronenwald on. Flick is my puppy's Grandpa. She totally looks like him to. She has the same patterns on the back of her ears and on her brow. I can't wait to see what the rest of her colors are going to be. She has the silver/black hairs too but they are limited to behind her shoulders down to about her elbows.

like she's going to be a great looking as she grows up and probably very noble as an adult.

>>I have a five month old german shepherd puppy, and hes the best dog i could ever hope for. He grows too fast though!!! Part of the growing is the colour change from almost all black to, well, lighter, and i was wondering if anyone else has a shepherd with a lot of grey/white markings. A lot of his face is comming through this colour, behind his ears, and a stripe along his back, thogh the hairs have black roots and tips, and are grey in the middle. Has anyone else ever seen this colouring? becuase I havent. I'll try to figure out how to post a picture so you can see.

>>>>>>>>>>>>

His adult coat is not in yet, and may be a different color than his puppy coat. In German Shepherds as in other breeds, gray or sometimes it's called silver is a color that goes back to the roots of the breed. It is not associated with any particular health issues, and can be gorgeous.

The hair across the shoulders, down the back, and across the base of the tail has color that may be normally hidden under the black. This seems to serve a function in making the dog look bigger and more imposing when the hackles are up. Breeders try to get all that hair on the back to be black, but nature often has other plans!

I realized the purpose of it when I was standing outside one day in just the right position with my insane female dog (now 12 years old and thank God she has never hurt anyone)who has more black in her coat than any other female Belgian Tervuren I've ever seen. So it was very startling when her hackles came ALL the way up (she was bad that way at that age, got too aroused into defense drive in the back yard at sight of anyone through the fence) and it looked like flames shooting up all down her back! That red color (or gray in the case of a gray dog with black overlay) there was put into the hackles for that very purpose. An enemy would think twice before tangling with a dog who looked like that!

The reverse coloration on the hairs is common, too, but isn't likely to look odd when the dog finishes getting an adult coat in a year or so. They can look very funky during the coat change. My breed has long hair, too, so they go through even weirder changes. I asked my breeder all kinds of questions, and she said really you just have to wait and see! If you feed your dog a high quality diet and take good care of him, I'll bet he winds up as good-lookin' as every one of mine have!
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Kathy Diamond Davis, author, "Therapy Dogs: Training Your Dog to Reach Others," 2nd edition, and the free Canine Behavior Series at www.veterinaryforum.com

Never thought about the function of the different colors -- it does create a mighty look.

A lot of puppies are real dark when born and then as with mine the silver, cream and white fill out as they grow. Send us pictures, he sounds cute.

p.s. It's silver until there about ten years old, then you can call it gray.
Craig

>>p.s. It's silver until there about ten years old, then you can call it gray.
>>Craig

Heh, I like that :-}

My Cookie is a mix, but she definitely got the color changing factor that GSD's have. When she was ten weeks, she was black from the tip of her tail, to the top of her head, and down her legs to about the elbow. And her belly was brown and her face was a mess of brown/black (Catahoula part of her). As she got older (She is 8 months now) her belly got these beautiful long silver hairs over the brown and her shoulders have shed almost all the black and are now a beautiful brown/copper and she has the traditional black U shape in the middle. Her back is still solid black though. Also, her tail used to be solid black but has developed that longer silver hair that runs down underneith her tail. And the top of her head and the backs of her ears have turned from black to a beautiful copper color.