New puppy with interesting pattern

Phoebe'smom said:
I keep wondering about the change in coat color. Sable means brown with black tips. I have also read that the proportion of brown to black sometimes changes as the dog ages. This would explain why lighter dogs eventually look dark. If the same thing applies to merled areas, then the gray portion would be eventually bigger, turning a red brown dog to a grey one. This is just a guess on my part. I wonder if you guys could check a few individual gray hairs and see if the root area is still brownish red?
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the merle area itself will not get bigger but as the hair length grows, it can look like a larger patch. smaller patches can be covered by regular colored fur and make it appear that there is less merling than there really is.

Sable is brown- not all sables get the mahogany shading but if they do have the mahogany shading, it will become more apparent as the fur gets longer.
 
i think what I was trying to understand was why does a reddish coat turn gray. From Yankee-shelties: "However, if you look at the individual hair of any sable it is reddish towards the root and ends with a black tip. The length of the black tip determines how shaded it looks. Mahogany is the one with the most on the hair shaft." That is why I wondered if the merle gray still has the former brown at the root. I should just shut up and enjoy my baby alligator!
 
The merle pattern remains the same sometimes white for white parts seems to get a bit smaller. The red/gold sable coloring mentioned here if anything darkens as they age. If they have the darker/black tipping that seems to come in a bit later but since the dark tips are on the normally colored sable hairs it does look at times as if the normal sable color disappears. However it still remains as it always has just in disguise. The reason that Jester has a noticeable pattern has more to do with the real dark tips on the normal sable hair. Otherwise it would blend a lot more.

So a dog that did not have the darker tipped fur the merle non merled fur may blend to the point where it would not be noticed at all. It varies whether they have the dark tipped hairs and varies how much they may have.
Tala was 6 1/2 when this was taken and as you can see he did not have a lot of the darker it appears that Jester would have been darker if he were not merled. This dog (Tala) was not merled at all.

https://thegreatoutdoors42.shutterfly.com/pictures/453

Another way to show this might be to take a look at Fox. He is merled but you can see it a bit easier on him as he would be a tri if he were not merled.
https://thegreatoutdoors42.shutterfly.com/pictures/11811 puppy
https://thegreatoutdoors42.shutterfly.com/pictures/11948 at two years
https://thegreatoutdoors42.shutterfly.com/pictures/11946
as you can see while his fur grew out the markings remained the same.
 
Eureka! I see it. On you link you also show a merle sable and I can see the brown at the base of the gray hair......gray that would have been black had not the merling occurred. I think that explains why some brown sable merles turn more gray. They would have turned more black anyway if not for the dilution.

Thank you for posting the pictures of those beauties.
 
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