Kyrie's Colors, Part One!

Kyrie's color pattern is very rare and it is one of the many things that make her special to me. :) It is also the reason I begged so hard for her back when her picture first went up on our breeder's Available Puppies page!!

Her basic color is called "brown sable with cream" the cream being the cream/white bib on the front of her neck under her muzzle. She is a sable because she has a paler undercoat with hairs that turn darker on her outer coat. Her back is almost black turning to a lighter color on her mane, with legs being a warm golden brown. Her ears are a more intense version of her leg color. Here are some pics from when she was between four and five months old!





But the most rare part of Kyrie's coloring is actually considered a show fault among Shiloh Shepherds at the moment (we are hoping that will change)--her muzzle, which is called "faded" because it is other than black. It is lightening up a bit at a time and we hope that eventually it will go to pure white. But why?

Waaaaaay back in Shiloh Shepherd history was the first breed outcross that Tina did--the MAW outcross, called that for Malamute, American Show Dog, and White Shepherd. The American Show Dog part of that was a line of German Shepherds with a very special heritage--they came from a kennel which had, once upon a time, produced dogs that looked like this:



So what's the story behind these dogs? Stay tuned!

Puppy Playtime!

Gonna try to catch this blog up to current...here are some of our old pics of Kyrie playing with Leo when she was around fourteen or fifteen weeks old. :) She never has completely figured out that he's much bigger than she is...even today she never quite gives up hope that someday when she body-checks him he'll fall over instead of her!! She weighed around twenty pounds in these pictures, and he weighed around sixty, and we supervised the play just in case, but Leo was very good with her and nobody ever got hurt even with the size disparity. This is something we hear a lot about Shilohs--that they are very gentle when playing with smaller dogs, pets, and little humans. :)

Kyrie's First Day!

Before I talk about why Kyrie's coloration is so special, I wanted to catch up a little bit with some of our first pictures of her. :) The above is my favorite pic of her when she was a little pup. Even though it's a bit blurry, I think it captures the puppy-cute and the sweetness of her expression very well! Here's another, better shot below. You can see how her colors had really lightened up in the four weeks or so since that first LER pic!



When we brought Kyrie home Zak and I were very inexperienced with introducing a younger dog to an older one. We had heard everything from horror stories to "Don't worry!" We wondered about where to introduce the pups and asked for advice on the forums. Finally we settled on the front sidewalk, which wasn't necessarily in Leo's "territory".

As it turned out, we needn't have worried. Leo was always a mush around other dogs--definately not even close to the alpha--and this tiny little puppy totally bowled him over! He couldn't figure out whether to follow her around, or play, or just fall over (see below)!



We did originally introduce them on leashes, but after we got them into our fenced-in backyard we let them go to figure each other out, and it worked fine. If you would like to see the photo album of Kyrie's First Day, go here to Zak's Picasa album!