This beautiful 6 month old Aytee GSP bitch was born this spring from a line of UK champions. Her name is Coco and she is a gorgeous dog who is of course, much loved by her owners.
She was born in New Zealand in our “P” litter from AI and 3 of the 6 puppies had tan markings, which as you probably know are not recognised by the UK or NZ Kennel Club GSP breed standard.
The point of sharing is that once the litter arrived we found that there is a genetic test that can track this colour so we tested all Aytee dogs and discovered that the ability to ‘unblock’ the tan colour had appeared genetically from 2 different sires.
Tests showed that Aytee Isadora could not produce the tan colour or carry the rare gene that ‘unblocks’ that colour, but when she was mated to produce our K litter some of those puppies had this rare ‘unblocking’ gene and through testing, one of these was later shown to be Aytee Kimono, the dam of our ‘P’ litter.
The sire of the ‘P’ litter was also tested, showing that he too, carried the rare ‘unblocking’ gene and by mating those 2 dogs together Aytee produced some tan marked puppies. Of course this is not a health issue, but by doing a simple saliva swab on your dog and having a gene test done, you can find out if your dog is a carrier of this ‘unblocking’ gene. We are lucky that this simple test exists which is inexpensive and no vet is necessary. Following our experience I would advise any owner to test their GSP before breeding because the gene will not be limited to Aytee dogs and it is a sensible way to guard against taking the colour forward.
Without knowledge nature can stay in charge however much we try 😏
Thankyou again to Coco and her owners for sharing this lovely picture and to all the owners of our “P” litter and to all Aytee owners, enjoy your dogs !