# I THOUGHT I bought a BLACK dog :)



## ArreauStandardPoodle (Sep 1, 2009)

Oh my goodness! Who'd have thunk it?!


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## frostfirestandards (Jun 18, 2009)

ArreauStandardPoodle said:


> Oh my goodness! Who'd have thunk it?!


I didnt know a whole lot about color genetics when I got him...he is loaded with silver and blue. 
Whats weird is that he was black til he was about a year old, then one day I shaved his face, and poof, he was blue


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## NOLA Standards (Apr 11, 2010)

Blue is interesting.

When I decided to breed blue - one of the factors - after I had the health and conformation concerns clear, was a male blue from birth. They are pretty rare apparently.

In my litter, the pups that were blue were noticably blue at 3 weeks, when I first shaved faces.

The color is gorgeous. If I weren't so in love with red...


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## DorothyB (Apr 10, 2011)

Parker is blue. At sixteen months, his true color still hasn't come in. If you flip over his ears, you can see the true color there. From my research on the web, it can take up to three years for the color to come in fully.


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## Hey_j (Apr 27, 2011)

Your Blues are so pretty, FrostFire and NOLA, and I'm so glad to find this discussion cause I have lots of questions on the Blues!

We've had our new girl, Callie for 3 weeks now and love her to pieces. She's 17 weeks now and she was the tallest girl of the litter of 12 she was in. Her dam was brown and her sire was black. Her nose, lips and eyeliner are all very black but her black coat has a lot of red in it, especially on her back and sides. Her toenails are either black or very dark gray--not sure! Compared to our old Lab's toenails they may be less black and more charcoal. Her eyes are a very dark brown/almost black and her skin is blue. There are no off colorings (white hairs) anywhere like her paws to show us that with the red highlighting she'll be a _shoo in_ for being blue Spoo (try saying shoo-in Spoo fast a few times) so I really don't know what to expect. 

Does anyone know if it's still possible that she's going to go blue if she's this old with no light hairs on the bottoms of her paws? 

We were going for *a black *but the breeder commented that as she bathed her to be ready to be seen by us, she suddenly noticed she had a lot of the red in her coat, but by the time she made the comment, we were already hooked. Whatever color she'll be, we'll continue to love her.

Her mother was so attached to me from the go, and just the sweetest girl--kept laying her head on my knees, leaning back on my chest and looking up at me, winding slowly between my legs like she wanted to crawl inside my skin. Maybe it was that going from 11 puppies to care for, to one less was something she was looking forward to, greatly and she was sooo hopeful.:beauty:



Janice aka Hey_j:act-up: (I'm sorry I'm so chatty on my first posting beyond the introduction forum. I guess I'm just an excited new Mom wondering who her child, er, _Spoo_ will grow up to be like.:bounce


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## CharismaticMillie (Jun 16, 2010)

frostfirestandards said:


> Brian as of tonight.....not so black.
> Normally (I thought) blues are noticeably blue by 12 weeks...he started changing at about a year old :alberteinstein:


Interesting!!! I have trouble differentiating blues from bad blacks. They look the same to me. :hmmmm:

That first picture looks just like Tony, my mom's deceased heart dog who was a bad black! What's the difference?


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## Jkline65 (Feb 23, 2011)

Maggie was over 3 before she really turned blue....they knew she was going to be blue when she was puppy by some color on her snout (not sure what it was,) but she didn't actually go blue until nearly 4...:afraid:


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## Jkline65 (Feb 23, 2011)

blues and blacks kinda look the same until you see one of each color together then it's obvious...


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## littlestitches (Dec 28, 2009)

Does anyone have a picture of a blue and black together so I can see the difference? 

Paula


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## CharismaticMillie (Jun 16, 2010)

I think it's just that that first picture is in bad lighting because it looks more like a bad black than a blue to me. I'd love to see a nice photo of him in better lighting!


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## Hey_j (Apr 27, 2011)

I apologize frostfire--I think I may have hijacked your thread!!!:afraid: 
I apologize for doing so and I surely didn't mean to do that! :sad: 

New kid on the block messing up already!!!:ahhhhh:
janice


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## Ruth (Nov 18, 2010)

ChocolateMillie said:


> Interesting!!! I have trouble differentiating blues from bad blacks. They look the same to me. :hmmmm:


Me too!! But mainly because I have never seen any blue in real life, just black toys or minis, and all the blues I see are in pictures in the internet and I can never tell why they are called blue. They all look black to me. :dazed:

I know there must be a different tone or something, I just can't see it in the pictures.

They're all lovely either way!


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## spoospirit (Mar 10, 2009)

_Frostfire, could you post a photo of him taken in natural daylight? It looks like this was taken with a flash. 

Although it is obvious that he is not black, I think the flash made his coat a lot brighter than it may normally look in daylight. I have seen this happen even with a truly black dog. Too much light on them and they look overexposed. I would truly like to see what he looks like in daylight as well. 

It is so hard to distinguish sometimes between the bad black and a blue. I sometimes wonder, too, if there is a difference. When Billy was a puppy, his muzzle was a reddish/brown and his coat had a definite reddish/brown hue to it everywhere. He is over 2 now and his coat has lightened quite a bit on the tail and rear end and is progressively moving forward. He does have light hair smattered in his coat. He still retains the reddish/brown hue on the darker parts of his coat. This is not sunburn. Billy has been in the house most of the winter, going out only to relieve himself and to go for a run once a week.

Bill is going to a pro groomer/handler for the first time a week from tomorrow. I am going to ask him whether he thinks he is a late blooming blue or a bad black. 

I also have read that blues can start to clear as late as two years old. I imagine it is rare but it does happen.

Blue or bad black, it doesn't matter to me because my Bill is my Bill. I would just like to finally put the color question to rest._


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## DorothyB (Apr 10, 2011)

littlestitches said:


> Does anyone have a picture of a blue and black together so I can see the difference?
> 
> Paula


Scroll down to the bottom of this page and you'll see blues and blacks together:

POODLE COAT COLORS: BLUE & BLACK


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## Bella's Momma (Jul 26, 2009)

I wonder if their colors are just truly a 'phase' in their lives which is constantly changing, even a small bit? 

I was told Bella was a silver beige when we brought her home, but she was very brown with liver lips/nails/eyelids as well, save for one light spot on her tail. Then around 1 1/2 years old she has really begun to turn. Now she is two and very clearly going silver-beige.


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## CharismaticMillie (Jun 16, 2010)

More pictures of Miss Bella, please!


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## frostfirestandards (Jun 18, 2009)

LOL Ill try to get better pics tomorrow, I dont have a lot of him hanging around, since they usually turn out blurry, he is always moving! 


blue is a weird color. Its almost between black and silver. a bad black is black with white hairs mixed in, a blue is (eventually ) an even dark grey color all over, no white mixed in

Does this almost make sense? 

I would take a quick pick of Willow(black) and Brian(blue) together, but thats another story for another day.


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## Ruth (Nov 18, 2010)

ooh, so then blue is more like a dark grey than a black?


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## NOLA Standards (Apr 11, 2010)

Carter's picture is attached. He is blue and in this photo is almost 8, I believe.

Ya'll know I'm bragging - cause he my "baby daddy", but I do really love him. He's on the cover of Poodle Review this issue (stud issue).

Also, I attached photos for you of Deuce, the black pick boy, and Scrappy, my little blue male (love that little bad boy!).

Colors in the litter are distinct - but again, Carter and his pups are great examples of blue. (I used auto correct on the photo of the blue pup and the black pup - photographing them is harder than photographing the reds and apricots!)

**When the pups were born, I was talking to Kay Palade Pesier on the phone and I told her I had 7 blacks. She told me to go check toenails and see if I had any white toenails - even combinations of black and white toenails - that if I did those pups weren't black they were blue. Well, Ruby had just finished an all nighter of giving birth to 13 puppies and I was tired...I thought it interesting and said I would go check...and Kay said, "Get up NOW and go see. The toenails will all be black in 24 hours!" 

She was right. Within 24 hours the toenails were gone. All my pups have black pads and no white hairs in the pads. The way I was able to tell, prior to shaving at 3 weeks, were the marks I placed on the pups with white toenails at birth.


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## CharismaticMillie (Jun 16, 2010)

I see, so it is a solid grey where as a bad black has light hairs mixed in.


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## frostfirestandards (Jun 18, 2009)

exactly...on a bad black they will still BE black, but with white hairs,giving the appearance of a blue dog


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## amerique2 (Jun 21, 2009)

Had heard about the white hairs between the pads but didn't know about the toenails. Interesting...


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## Hey_j (Apr 27, 2011)

*Very *interesting and helpful Nola!! I can see why your blue 'baby' Carter would be on the cover of a magazine! All three pix are really gorgeous specimens--again I'm using the word--GORGEOUS! I'm thinking I'm fast becoming a HUGE fan of SPOOS!!

janice


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## ArreauStandardPoodle (Sep 1, 2009)

Our first home bred champion when I was a kid was Jester, a blue. Each hair is steel gray, and there were not white hairs interspersed with black. The hairs themselves were a different colour. On a blue in show coat, their coat resembles a steel wool pad.


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## LEUllman (Feb 1, 2010)

ChocolateMillie said:


> I see, so it is a solid grey where as a bad black has light hairs mixed in.


I just hate that term, "bad black," don't you? Henceforth I propose we call it "salt and pepper." :smile:


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## spoospirit (Mar 10, 2009)

_I didn't know about the white toe nails either. All three of our black born pups with light hair between their toes also had snow white toe nails. Interesting information to keep. Thank you._


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## Hey_j (Apr 27, 2011)

:amen: LEUllman--I'm with you! Salt and Pepper! _'Bad'_ sounds so final, shaming and dismissal!


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## PoodleMomAnew (Dec 22, 2010)

NOLA, Carter is stunning! What a handsome poodle. If only Hunter's color resembles Carter's at some point I will be one happy camper as he is a blue. He is a puppy from Kay as I mentioned in a PM with you. Your puppy is adorable, too.


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## EmilyK (Mar 26, 2011)

I'm curious about this too. I just bought a black but his mother is silver and his dad is white. His litter mates that were born blacks all ended up being silvers, plus a brown and an apricot. Is there any way he's actually going to stay black? Is there any way to tell at 9 weeks if he'll be blue or black? His face is definitely too dark to be a silver. Sometimes in certain light and at certain angles I think the hairs around his mouth look a little grayish.


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## spoospirit (Mar 10, 2009)

_At 9 weeks, you should be able to tell the if the puppy is either blue or silver. The muzzle when shaved should appear either very light compared to the black coat if it is a silver, or, if it is a blue, it should appear somewhat lighter than the black coat as a rule._


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## Aussie_Fox (Apr 20, 2011)

*i thought i bought a black dog*

that's ok...
i thought i bred a black dog... he even went out on breeders terms... it wasnt until i saw him again two years later, that i discovered he was blue..









the first dog. ... wesley is black... the second dog zeus... is blue... 
hope that helps


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## Aussie_Fox (Apr 20, 2011)

*oops*

seems like link didnt work - i'll try attaching photos instead


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