Tuesday 27 September 2016

More About The L/C Gene

Now with the risk of getting long coat puppies from Merlot and Sammi, I was thinking again, yes during daylight hours, about the long coat gene.
In 2014 Tasha was mated to Nico, they produced 10 standard coat puppies, meaning it's highly unlikely that she does carry the gene. Nico does! So where does that put Loki and Bella? Well 50% of any progeny they may have will carry the l/c gene and 50% will not. But If Tasha had been mated to a l/c all pups would still be s/c but all would carry the l/c gene.
Well I guess it makes sense, but it makes no different to Merlot and Sammi pups. We know Merlot carries the gene as he has l/c progeny. I would imagine Sammi would. Both her parents have produced l/c puppies and had siblings who were l/c's. But it's a little more complicated than that. There would on average have been 25% in Nico x Ziva's litter who don't carry the l/c gene, 50% of the litter are s/c who carry l/c gene,  and 25% are actual l/c. So yeah in the "I litter" we had 2 x l/c's and 4 x s/c's. So of those S/C one at least theoretically does not carry the l/c gene. Maybe that is Sammi? Maybe not ... but definitely it was Seffe in the "A" litter as she had 2 x l/c siblings, but she didn't produce any l/c's progeny!
After all that, we may understand it (I hope) but without testing our dogs, we just have to wait and see, and consider that dogs who do carry the gene have an important part to play in our breed. Further more many of the dogs who do not carry the L/c gene may not always produces as profuse a coat as those who do!