Remember how I said that it can be hard to tell a brown-skinned red to yellow dogs from some shades of liver?
Well the Chesapeake Bay retriever is a breed that comes in only brown-skinned colors. All Chessies are brown-skinned red to yellows or livers.
The dog pictured above is most likely a brown-skinned red dog. You would get this same color in a brown-skinned golden or most tollers. In Chesapeake parlance, it is a “sedge.”
Now, the dog above was relatively easy to assess. What about this one?
This dog is probably a very dark red Chesapeake, but it approaching something like what we seen in “chestnut livers.”
The dog below is a chestnut liver.
Chespeakes also come in “deadgrass,” which is something like what we call light gold in golden retrievers.
Chesapeake Bay retrievers come in colors that were associated with the Tweed water dog or Tweed water spaniel. In fact, my reading of the descriptions of the Tweed water spaniel suggest that they looked a lot like slightly smaller chessies.
These light yellow puppies could be born to liver dogs, so they were called “light livers.”
In Chesapeake Bay retrievers, black skin pigment does not exist. That means there really is no consequence of misindentifying a chestnut liver or a very dark red.
When the golden was split off from the flat-coat, it was decided very quickly that goldens would have black skin. Brown-skinned goldens are extremely rare. This trait in the Tweed water dog was bred out of them. It still pops up every once in a while, but it is rare compared to the black-skinned red to yellow.
Why did goldens have to have black skin?
Most sources say that the brow-skinned dogs had rather hard expressions.
However, I think there is another good reason.
If you breed a black skinned red to yellow to a liver, you can produce black puppies.
If you’ve accidentally moved a chestnut liver into the golden registry, which did happen, and breed it to a mahogany or dark red golden, chances were pretty good that the puppies would be black. If you breed a brown-skinned red to yellow to a black-skinned red to yellow, you will most likely get a litter that is a heterozygous black-skinned red to yellow in color. However, if that so-called brown-skinned red to yellow is actually a reddish liver, the puppies will probably be black in color.
Because it is sometimes hard to tell a red to yellow with brown skin from a liver, you simply make brown skin an undesireable trait. Then you don’t have the confusion.
You need a photo of one with a mask. If I find a good one, I’ll send it. They’re pretty cool. :)
Like this?: http://www.geocities.com/petsburgh/farm/1276/shdeadgr.html
yup, that’s it. They can be pretty distinctive.
Official Chessie colors: Brown, Dark Brown, Light Brown, Deadgrass, Light Deadgrass, Sedge, Tan, Ash. The Chessie people seem to get very uptight about what colors are what; I can’t actually tell them apart. And I always forget sedge and ash and have to look them up (yes, I did the internet cheat and looked them up).
They are an interesting dog; I haven’t known enough to know if I “get” them–they’re a little different than the other retrievers, for sure. Those who have them are very loyal to the breed.
I have a very hard time telling them apart. It’s just like all the colors that ferrets come in. I can discern only two: albino and non-albino.
I have a hard time figuring out reddish livers from true reds.
And to make matters worse, red means liver when you’re talking to a Doberman person or someone in kelpies, border collies, and Australian shepherds. And kelpies and BC’s come in the same color of red as golden retrievers in addition to the liver red.
Don was a “sandy liver” flat-coat. He was probably a reddish liver.
His sire was Lucifer, one of the yellow dogs bred by the 1st Baron Tweedmouth. Lucifer was what we’d call a golden retriever today.
This is where it gets really confusing about color. Don obviously carried the yellow color. This was back when goldens were nothing more than a color variety of flat-coat, so you wound up with a wide range of colors that could be livers or true reds or yellows.