The breed standards are the blue prints of individual breeds, and on eye colour the GSD breed standard says ...
" Eyes - Medium sized, almond-shaped, never protruding. Dark brown preferred, lighter shade permissible, provided expression good and general harmony of head not destroyed. Expression lively, intelligent and self-assured."
Now I'm quite particular about eyes, for me they should be as dark as possible - Kaiah simply has the best eyes here, they are almost black and blend in beautifully with her dark face. Ziva's eyes on the other hand are pretty light, but they are the same colour as the surrounding tan and definitely do not destroy the harmony of the head. Loki's eyes are also a tad light, but with the blend of tan on his head it works. What really does detract is a light eye on a black face - as an example imagine Kaiah head with Ziva's eye colour - for me it really wouldn't work!
With puppies eye colour is almost impossible to predict and they often lighten after 8 weeks old. At 8 weeks Orin's eyes were of no concern to me .. but sadly now they are becoming light. They do tend to look lighter in the photos than when I look at him, but currently in the photos they are, in my opinion, distracting. I can't deny I'm not disappointed, of course I am. With his fathers eye colour and Sammi's being pretty dark I didn't expect it.
I've looked back at other "Blanik" boys at the same age and I guess Orin's eyes are not too dissimilar to Mikey's at the same age, his eye was a little light on his black head but they were not glaringly distracting.
Of course we don't know if Orin will keep the black face - or whether he'll just have a mask, If his eye is a little light then I guess it would benefit his show career to have more tan on his head like Loki, than to have a full black head like Nico and Mikey ... but it is what it is, nothing I can do to change it ... time will tell!
Mikey and Orin at the same age
Mikey
