Awwww! They're adoreable! I love labs when they're puppies because they are soooooooooo white. Hunter is still pretty white (with the exception of his heeler spots)
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-The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all
Wow! The lab in the top pic is REALLY light colored. I don't know why I like that so much, but I do, lol. Same with Golden Retrievers. I like the red ones, but if they are 'golden', I like it to be really light. I'm weird =P
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-The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all
They are adorable. I'm not picking on the shade of yellow--white, real yellow, yellowish red, whatever. It's the pigment thing that drives me crazy, so I always enjoy looking at your dogs because you pay proper attention to pigment.
Poor pigment is to be expected in a lab that is obviously poorly bred. If the head and body type are off, why would the pigment be any better? What really gets me is when I see a yellow who has a good head and proper lab body (not too lanky, not too heavy), in short a dog who looks as though his breeder put real thought into producing a classic lab, but the nose is a dudley. Even I know you have to breed back to black, and I don't have a lab, and I don't breed anything. The otherwise gorgeous dogs with poor pigment are the ones that really drive me nuts.
I hope you'll continue to post pics as the pups grow.
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"Thought is an invisible and subtle power that mocks all the efforts of tyranny." Alexis de Tocqueville
Thank-you Proto. If all people were as knowlegable as you, there would be no Dudley litters. I am really happy that I can use some yellow to yellow breedings that produce as desirable a color as this litter.
Yah. When you breed yellow dogs together for too many generations, or mix chocolate into the line, you get a lightening of the pigment in the eyes, lips, nose etc. To be correct, these are dark eyes, and black around the eyes, lips and nose, paw-pads too. The lighter color can be yellow or blue eyes, with the nose red and pigment missing on paws, lips, and around the eyes. The black gene, if it carries yellow, will give you the dark desirable color points on your yellow pups. Probably you get black pups in the litter, also. It's kinda neato, not knowing what color will pop out of mom next. See how dark those points are in these pups? The mother of these pups had a black sire that carried a yellow gene [or all would have been black, as black genes are dominant to yellow].
There's a practical advantage to the black pigment. If the issue was just about being pretty, I wouldn't give a rip about it (although I do have to admit that the black does look nicer). Black pigment produces features that are tougher than lighter colored features and thus allows the dog to work without injury in harsher conditions than the dogs with lighter colored pigment can withstand.
Dogs that evolved as pariahs always have black pigment, and that's no accident. The black helps with survival because it leads to fewer injuries.
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"Thought is an invisible and subtle power that mocks all the efforts of tyranny." Alexis de Tocqueville