What Colors Are Dogs?

Posted by Jeanne on October 7, 2009

Color is a shade, hue, or cast of hair or coat. There are a lot of dog colors; here are the most common:

Badger – white markings on the forehead
Belton - originally a combination of blue and yellow colors. Now applied as blue belton, orange belton, red belton, etc., especially to English setters, being an irregular spotting and flecking (rather than a pattern or patch) of one of these colors on a white background. Flecked is a near synonym.
Black and Tan – an ancient and well-known color pattern in dogs, very dominant hereditarily. The main or body color is solid black; the tan or red rust is lustrous and well defined on feet, at breeching, on side of cheek, above eyes, and on inside of ears – as in dachshund, doberman, bloodhound, gordon setter, manchester, coonhound, cocker.
Blue – may vary from lilac blue and smoke on kerry to slate and steel gray.
Brindle – a solid background marked with thin stripes, running more or less crosswise of body; most common arrangement: black stripes on brown body as in brindle dane.
Bronze - a reddish, rusty, or semi-golden tinge on solid black.
Chocolate – equivalent to dark liver.
Dapple – marked with small spots against a white background for instance gray or red against white. See also flecked and belton.
Deadgrass – deep yellow with brown cast, as on Chesapeake Bay retriever.
Fawn – brown that may range from biscuit or cream to deep gold. In some breeds, fawn is classed as red.
Flecked – see belton. Dapple is a heavy flecking. Color pattern so named as though color were applied by flecking, by spotting, by streaking, and striping, in a free-hand, variegated fashion.
Gray - Wolf-gray, silver gray, blue gray, ash gray, steel gray, pepper and salt, iron gray – all are white interspersed with varying shadings of black.
Grizzle – a mixture of blue and gray or black and blue.
Harlequin – a solid color that clearly predominates over entire body, usually white, spotted generously with another color as in dalmatian and harlequin dane.
Hound-Marked – irregular patches of black, tan, and white, usually with black saddle.
Isabella - a dog yellowish – brown in color; a peach color.
Merle – blue with tinge of gray and irregular in shading.
Parti-Color - two colors but irregular in size, shape, and location; variegated as in marble; one color may or may not predominate. Do not confuse with a mismarked solid color, usually with white feet, white tail tip, white on head, and large white spot on chest.
Penciling – thin black lines of tan on feet of certain breeds, as toy manchester.
Pied Or Piebald – large patches of two colors, usually one solid body color with irregular, usually somewhat round patches of another color. Not the same as houndmarked and parti-colored.
Puce - dark liver.
Red – may vary from lemon to deep mahogany, the term denoting varying shades depending on breed. Liver (golden or dark) brown, tan, chestnut, orange, and lemon are decreasing intensity shades or red about in order given. Sandy, honey, buff, platinum blonde are varying shades of red.
Roan – a two-color (or parti-color technically) being gray or white hairs thickly interspersed in a basic background of any one of chestnut, red, brown, black. If black background, usually termed blue roan; red, a strawberry roan. At times a yellowish-red coated animal is called a roan.
Sable - technically black but as used in dog fancy, a black shading over a lighter color as brown, in sable collie.
Solid Color - whole colored, self-colored, all of one color although this permits of white markings on chest in most breeds.
Straw – almost the same as wheaten, or a bit paler.
Tri-color – three colors – usually black, tan, and white as on tri-color collie.
Wheaten - color of ripe wheat, a golden yellow.