If ever a breed was misnamed, it is probably the greyhound – writes Floyd Amphlett.
Checking through the GBGB list of different colours of racing greyhounds you will find that there are 35 different variations of colour but black utterly dominates with 58% of the total.
It wasn’t always that way. In fact, ‘brindlehound’ might have been a more accurate name. Of the first 20 English Derby winners, 14 were brindle, with five fawns and just one black, Davesland. Brindles are still the second most common colour with 10%. In fact, that is a minimal estimate since, variations of brindle including ‘black brindle’ and ‘blue brindle’ are considered separately. Blues, the colour most likely to be considered as ‘grey’ count for 8% of the total with fawns, once second only to brindles, account for a mere 3% of the total.
Dun coloured greyhound – pic taken by Steve Nash in 2011.
In fact, 21 of the ‘exotic’ colours including ‘black brindle’ ‘dun and white’, ‘black brindle’, and ‘white’ account to only 1% of the total between them.
Given the nature of black domination, all the leading sires produce more blacks than any other colour – even a brindle, like multiple times champion sire Kinloch Brae, throws twice as many blacks as brindles. (The black Droopys Jet throws four blacks for every brindle).
Ballymac Vic, another brindle, throws quite like his imported sire Kinloch Brae. But Vic does produce blues and fawns. In fact, Liam Dowling’s dog throws 23 different colour combinations.
The one exception appears to be Ballymac Best who in terms of ‘performances’ not strictly ‘greyhounds’ had more brindles than blacks – though the numbers are quite small compared to the dogs previously mentioned.
Is this any more than a look at a novelty aspect of greyhound racing. Probably not – though there might be a few re-homing kennels with a different view.
If you have a greyhound with particularly unusual colouring, I would be pleased to see a photo.
There are few more interesting quirks of coat colour than dun, which, like blue is an allele of black. In addition to the chocolate coloured coat, the dogs usually had pink nose leather and light eyes.
The origins are unknown though there was a claim when they first appeared that they were as a result of a rare doubling up of a gene from the an American import in the late 1950s which had lay dormant. It was the arrival at stud of Staplers Jo that set off the very brief dun explosion.
This study only showed two greyhounds with dun colouring, two littermates, of which only one has been retired this year. The other is Central Park grader Que Sera Sera.
She was from a frozen semen mating between the deceased Premier Fantasy and Desirable (who has Staplers Jo in her pedigree). Interestingly, although the dam produced five litters, she only threw duns – three in total – in this particular litter.
