The Development of Ticking

I love reading about coat color genetics, and describing dogs that I meet. One of the things that really fascinates me is the development of ticking, the distinctive mottled pattern found on Australian cattledogs. Dogs with the ticking gene are born white, if they are to have any solid-colored patches, they will have those at birth.

I have been working with a litter of Australian cattledog puppies since they were born in December, and watching their coats change has been delightful. When they were around two weeks old we attempted to line them all up for a picture, like I see all the time of adorable litters of puppies. They did not cooperate. At all.

Fortunately, one of the primary things I have been doing with these puppies is to help document their growth and development, and to take pictures to help get them adopted.

3 weeks

Here is one of the puppies at 3 weeks old. Dexter started out with black eye patches and back patches, with the rest of his body solid white. At three weeks he was beginning to develop little freckles on his feetsies.

5 weeks
Photo by Erin Koski

By  5 weeks his ticking had developed considerably.

12 weeks

At 12 weeks he was very spotty indeed.

18 weeks

At 18 weeks he was pretty solidly roaned, and also totally adorable. I have this same photo series for seven of these guys.

3 weeks

                                              

This is Opie at three weeks. At first we thought he might be liver-colored instead of black like a proper cattledog. For a puppy to end up liver-colored, both parents would have to carry the recessive gene, and cattledogs shouldn't have it at all.

5 weeks
Photo by Erin Koski

At five weeks he was more obviously genetically black with a red modifier.

9 weeks

See how his eye patches spread to meet in the middle? I believe he is a shaded sable (red with some black hairs), while the other red puppies are clear sables (no black hairs). 

Brisbane is also a shaded sable.

18 weeks

He doesn't appear to be getting appreciably darker between 9 and 18 weeks. His little half-mustache has disappeared into his ticking.

Brisbane had a similar pattern of color development as a baby. He developed ticking on his feet and face, and his white areas got smaller and in some cases disappeared. Has your dog's coat changed since you got them?