Shaded Sable (Ays)

A dog is shaded yellow or shaded sable when he has a white, yellow, or red base coat with dark-tipped hairs in its dorsal areas. Sable shading is concentrated mostly on the dog’s back and often causes a widow’s peak on the forehead and a dark tail spot.

What is Shaded Yellow?

Shaded yellow or shaded sable describes a coat with a white, yellow, or red base color and darker hair tipping. The expression of dark-tipped hairs is called sabling or shading.

Hair tipping is in essence a reduced version of agouti hair banding. So expect not all sable hairs to look the same. Shaded sables can also have slightly banded hairs, some even with a dark root.

Areas with dark pigment are commonly found on their shoulders, collar, back, neck, tail, and forehead.

Sable puppies are born with dark-ish coats but will start to clear after some weeks.

Many dogs with sable shading display a widow’s peak on their forehead.

Hints of dark face and leg shading only happen in very heavily shaded sable patterns (or with the help of an extended black mask). With few exceptions, normal sable does not cause dark shading on the face below the widow’s peak. A dark nose bar, dark hair under the eyes, or a strip of dark hair down the front legs indicate a light agouti pattern instead, which can look a little similar.

Until recently, there was no accurate way of predicting if a sable pattern would keep its dark puppy shading or not, both phenotypes were considered natural variations of sable (A^y).

However, with new findings about the genetics of A locus patterns, the name shaded yellow was chosen to distinguish this pattern from a dominant yellow (= “clear sable”) phenotype.

The difference between clear and shaded sable is the amount of eumelanin-tipped hairs.

A dominant yellow (aka clear sable) dog has an almost solid coat color. A shaded yellow dog has considerable amounts of dark pigment visible in the hair tips on its neck, ears, or back.

The ASIP^SY allele (A^ys)

The A-Locus promotes phaeomelanin production.

Every dog has an A locus with two alleles. But the ASIP patterns can only be expressed in dogs that are not dominant black (K^B/-) at the K-Locus and not recessive red (e/e) at the E-Locus.

For a long time, there were only four different alleles at the A-Locus:

Ay (sable) > aw (agouti) > at (tan point) > a (recessive black).

And for many breeds, this system still works pretty well and is about as much as breeders need to know.

But in some dogs, this old testing system lacked some necessary information to predict all coat patterns. And sable shading was one of those things that could not always be predicted reliably.

Thanks to new research, more A locus variants are nmow testable:

ASIPDY	Ay	Dominant Yellow, Clear Sable
ASIPSY	Ays	Shaded Yellow, Shaded Sable
ASIPAG	aw	Agouti, Wolf Grey
ASIPBS	asa	Black Saddle
ASIPBB	at	Black Back, Tan Point
ASIPa	a	Recessive Black

Shaded sable (ASIP^SY or A^ys) is the second-most dominant trait at the A-Locus.

It is caused by a particular combination of two newly described promoter regions of ASIP:

The ventral promoter controls how much the ventral tan markings will extend.

The hair cycle promoter controls how much dark hair banding a dog can have on its back.

A shaded sable dog has normal tan markings (VP2).

But it has a more active mutant of the hair cycle promoter (HCP1) that favors tan in banded areas. This causes predominantly tan hairs with only dark tips instead of banded hairs.

This combination or haplotype (VP2-HCP1) represents the new dominant yellow allele A^ys. Other haplotypes represent other alleles (see the A-Locus for more info).

Phenotype	Allele	VP	HCP
Clear Sable	Ay (DY)	VP1 extended tan markings	HCP1 extended tan banding
Shaded Sable	Ays (SY)	VP2 normal tan markings	HCP1 extended tan banding
Agouti	aw (AG)	VP2 normal tan markings	HCP2 normal tan banding
Saddle Tan	asa (BS)	VP1 extended tan markings	HCP3,4,5 no tan banding, solid black
Tan Point	at (BB)	VP2 normal tan markings	HCP3,4,5 no tan banding, solid black
Recessive Black	a	(VP2)	(HCP3)

A shaded sable pattern can happen in dogs that are Ays/-. Some breeds such as Leonbergers seem to be fixed for Ays/Ays and produce only dogs with shaded sable patterns. And according to the new allelic hierarchy, once a breed is fixed for shaded sable, it can not produce a clear sable dog.

But there is an alternative pathway that can produce a shaded sable pattern:

Since the A locus variants are co-dominant, there is also the possibility for a clear sable dog that carries a darker pattern to also produce some dark shading. Think of breeds such as Shelties that have both sables and tan points, these will often produce some heterozygous Ay/at dogs that are shaded.

This way, a clear sable dog that carries tan point (Ay/at) or recessive black (Ay/a) might even have a darker coat than some homozygous shaded sable dogs (Ays/Ays).

Shaded Sable Patterns

Puppies for some reason express more eumelanin as they will usually keep in their adult coat. Dogs with a shaded yellow coat are often born with an almost black coat.

As youngsters, they can go through a very paler phase until some amount of shading returns.

Adult shaded sable dogs often have a widow’s peak on their forehead that ends above or between the eyes. In contrast to other patterns, black shading rarely extends along the ridge of the nose.

A widow’s peak doesn’t only happen in dogs with lots of sabling. It seems to be its own thing and can sometimes appear on yellow dogs that don’t have that much black on their back.

A shaded sable pattern contains a noticeable amount of eumelanin. This means, any phenotype affecting eumelanin might also be visible, e.g. sable merle or progressive graying.

Amount of Sabling

The dark hair tips typically appear on the dog’s ears, forehead, neck, back, and tail.

But a shaded yellow coat can have a large or small amount of sabling. Dogs with only a small amount of visible shading along thier topline are sometimes called tipped sable.

And of course, coat length and coat texture can also affect how dark a dog looks. Hair tipping is more pronounced in long-haired dogs simply because the black hair tips can grow longer.

Red Intensity

The base color provided by phaeomelanin can range from off-white to yellow or red.

Different factors control phaeomelanin intensity.

In shaded yellow dogs, different base colors can result in certain phenotypes being described as silver sable, cream sable, red sable, etc.

Black-Based Sable

The nose, eye rims, lips or nails as well as the dark tips in all shaded areas get their color from eumelanin.

The wild-type color of eumelanin is black and the majority of dog breeds express black-based shaded sable.

Liver Sable

A homozygous recessive combination at the B-Locus (b/b) can turn all black pigment to brown.

This affects all the eumelanin on a dog. The nose and skin pigment on a chocolate sable will also be brown. Typically, brown dogs also have greenish puppy eyes and amber eyes as adults.

Brown-based shaded sable may not be as obvious as black-based sable since there may be little contrast between brown hair tips and let’s say a red base color.

Blue Sable

If a dog can produce black pigment (B/-) but is homozygous recessive for color dilution at the D-Locus (d/d), then all its black pigment will turn to a blue, gray, or slate color.

Dilution turns all dark hair tips, skin pigment, and the nose leather blue and typically causes a yellow-greenish eye color.

A blue-based shaded sable can have a very distinct look caused by the blue overcast on its back.

Lilac Sable

Just as black pigment can be turned blue by color dilution, brown can be diluted to isabella/lilac. But since lilac hair tips barely give any contrast it can be difficult to spot this pattern.

Shaded Brindle Sable

Brindle (k^br/-) adds dark stripes on any phaeomelanin-pigmented coat. Depending on a dog’s B-Locus and D-Locus, all brindle stripes will be either black, blue, brown, or lilac.

Masked Shaded Sable

A melanistic mask (Em/-) adds eumelanin to a dog’s muzzle or face.

Melanistic masks are known to sometimes extend to the chest and legs. They usually don’t add to the sabling but large masks can increase the perceived amount of black.

Some dog breeds that produce masked shaded sable are Belgian Sheepdog, Leonberger, Papillon, and Borzoi.

Shaded Sable and White

Traits like piebald, whitehead, or Irish spotting can cause white patches without any pigment. Think of these patches as an overlay that has erased a dog’s original coat color in some places.

Shaded Sable and Ticking

In some dogs, the areas that were white at birth can get some of their color back.

Over time, little fully pigmented dots will grow inside the white markings.

This phenomenon is called ticking or roan, depending on the pattern. The mottles produce exactly the color one would have expected in their place if the dog hadn’t been white.

Sable Merle

Merle removes some of the eumelanin from a pattern, phaeomelanin is rarely affected. For classic merle to be visible, a dog must have at least some eumelanin. Oftentimes, the merle pattern is only visible in the more heavily shaded puppy coat but fades when the shading starts to clear.

A dark shaded yellow dog can have a large amount of black-tipped hairs on its back.

This can act as the canvas Merle needs to become visible.

Producing sable merle is discouraged in most breeds since there is always the risk of accidentally producing a dog that is too yellow to see that its Mele. This is called hidden Merle.

Hidden Merle creates a risk for breeders since you can’t always assume a dog isn’t Merle because it doesn’t look Merle. We highly recommend M-Locus testing to reduce an easily avoidable risk.

Sable and Graying

Progressive greying causes the fading of eumelanin pigment and only happens in dogs with a furnished coat. It turns black eumelanin to gray or silver and brown pigment to beige or sandy colors.

Since this mainly affects eumelanin, it only affects the darker portions of the coat.

Examples of dog breeds with shaded yellow and graying are Tibet Terrier, Havanese, Polish Lowland Sheepdog, Shih Tzu, Lhasa Apso, and some color-bred sable Poodles.

Sable and Countershading

Countershading causes lighter markings on the dog’s underside, chest, throat, muzzle, eyebrows, and under the tail. It can give a somewhat smooth color transition from ventral to dorsal areas.

In some breeds, the lighter markings turn almost white and have very defined edges. The correct placement of very countershading is called urajiro in some Asian spitz breeds.

Sable and Domino

Domino traits like ancient domino and grizzle reduce the amount and spread of eumelanin.

They can also lighten the intensity of phaeomelanin in any pattern.

In dogs that are genetically shaded sable, it can delete most or all of the dark shading. This causes a more uniform solid cream or pale yellow look on dogs that should have had shading.

In sighthound breeds like Saluki, this is called newsprint cream. Puppies still have faint sabling but it disappears entirely once the dog grows up.

Another interesting thing about domino is that agouti domino or even strong tan point domino sometimes resembles a sable-like pattern:

Dog Breeds with Shaded Yellow

Many breeds have both the shaded sable (Ays) and the clear sable allele (Ay). Only some breeds are fixed for shaded sable allele (Ays/Ays). Others get this pattern from having lots of heterozygotes (Ay/at).

And some traditional fawn breeds prefer clear sable and classify sabling as a mismark.

These breeds are supposed to be fixed for clear sable (Ay/Ay). But some dogs might carry shaded sable (Ay/Ays), so breeding a homozygous puppy (Ays/Ays) can happen from time to time.

Overall, shaded yellow is a very common base pattern and is found in many breeds^[1]:

• Alpine Dachsbracke
• Belgian Malinois
• Belgian Tervuren
• Border Collie
• Border Terrier
• Borzoi
• Central Asian Shepherd Dog
• Chihuahua
• Collie
• Dachshund
• Havanese
• Leonberger
• Lhasa Apso
• Löwchen
• Papillon
• Polish Lowland Sheepdog
• Pyrenean Shepherd
• Saluki
• Sheltie
• Shiba
• Shih Tzu
• Skye Terrier
• Small Swiss Hound
• Tibetan Mastiff
• Tibetan Spaniel
• Tibet Terrier

Learn More

Links

[1] Bannasch, D.L., Kaelin, C.B., Letko, A. et al. Dog colour patterns explained by modular promoters of ancient canid origin. Nat Ecol Evol 5, 1415–1423 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-021-01524-x

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