Sweetnose Mastiff Genetics and Information (no posting)

[jensen ackles]

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A large part around Sweetnose Masiffs are the large variety of genetics. In order to understand these genetics, one must understand two important things; pheomelanin, and eumelanin. Eumelanin is what we generally call the 'black pigment'. Simply put, all black areas on a dog are due to the eumelanin; including eyes and nose. Whenever a dog is called 'black pigmented' it's referring to the color of the eumelanin.
Eumelanin is special in the way that it can be 'diluted'; meaning, the pigment can be suppressed or restricted in a manner that causes it to be a different color. The eumalanin can be diluted into three colors; liver (brown), blue (grey / blue grey), or isabella (dusty pale brown). There are two series that control this dilution, which will be covered below in the genotype series.

[Venatici]

K / Ta / E / B / D / Sl / A / C / S / M / H / Tw / T / G / U / Fur


☆ = recessive genes
★ = dominant genes
⬖ = co-dominant genes

All genes are listed in order from most dominant to least; this does not count for co-dominance. All genes require two copies of a series.

#1 - K Series - Decides how the B series shows

⬖ K - Overrides series #6; gives solid black pigment coat.
⬖ Kbr - Gives brindled coat
⬖ Kbr(pb)* - 'Wild' Agouti; Creates Bengal markings; a bengal with one of these + non-agouti gene will resemble a charcoal bengal.
⬖ Kbr(fc)* - 'Domestic' Agouti; Creates Mackerel or Classic Tabby markings.
☆ k - Allows series #7/red pigment to show in the coat.
*The brindle modifiers, pb and fc, are tabby markings.

#2 - Ta Series - Allows specialty domestic agouti stripes
Sweetnose Mastiff Specific

★ Mc - Mackerel tabby; domestic agouti modifier; the stripes are more tiger-like and broader.
☆ mc - Classic Tabby; domestic agouti modifier; creates a marble tabby pattern.

#3 - E Series - Appears over the A series

★ Em - Gives dog a black pigment mask on face.
⬖ E+ - Extends the mask down the chest and even to the stomach and feet. Co-dominant to Em.
☆ E - Allows black in coat, no mask.
☆ e - A fully red coat (recessive red).

#4 - B Series - Base color on the dog
Also affects nose and eye colors/pigment

★ B - Black pigment.
☆ b - Black turns into liver (brown).

#5 - D Series - Base Coat Dilution
Also affects nose and eye colors/pigment

★ D - No dilution, leaves the coat black or liver.
☆ d - Dilution; black into blue, liver into isabella.

#6 - Sl Series - Makes a dog solid white, regardless of other genes

★ Sl - No silvering.
☆ sl - Makes the dog solid white.

#7 - A Series - Determines how much of the B/D series cover the dog

⬖ Ay - Sable (Tipped, Clear, Shaded).
⬖ Aw - Grizzle (Agouti).
⬖ At - Tanpoints.
☆ a - Recessive solid black (fully black pigment dog).
☆ as - Seal.

#8 - C "Chinchilla" Series - Modifies the intensity of red

★ C - Normal red pigment (darkest red shade).
☆ Cch - Red lightened to fawn.
☆ Ce - Red lightened to cream.
☆ Cw - Red lightened to silver (lightest shade).

#9 - S Series - Most dominant, decides the white extent

⬖ S - Residual white or no white.
⬖ Si - Mantle white (across neck and chest).
⬖ Sp - Piebald white .
⬖ Sw - Extreme piebald white (large amounts of white).

#10 - M Series - Controls merle
Double merles often have serious health issues

★ M - Black pigment areas are merle.
☆ m - No merling.

#11 - H Series - A merle modifier; Harlequin
Requires at least one M (series #10) to show

★ Hh - Harlequin.
☆ h - No harlequin.
Harlequin is an embryonic lethal gene, meaning any puppy with HH will be reabsorbed and not birthed.

#12 - Tw Series - A merle modifier; Tweed
Requires Mm to show; does not show on MM (double merles)

★ Tw - Tweed.
☆ tw - No tweed.

#13 - T series - White marking modifiers
Only shows if a dog has white markings

⬖ Tr - Roaning.
⬖ T - Ticking.
⬖ Ts - Dalmatian spots (large spots, ears and around eyes are usually colored).
☆ tt - no ticking or roaning, solid white.

#14 - G Series - Greys out color in various stages, but may leave patches of fur unaffected

★ G - Varying degrees of greying is present on the coat, gets lighter with age.
☆ g - No graying.

#16 - U Series - Gives light undersides, cream or white "points"

★ U - Urajiro.
☆ u - No urajiro.

#17 - Fur Series - Distinguishes Fur Type

★ W - Wirehaired.
☆ w - Normal hair.

All coding and touched up genetics credit to the lovely watchdog. who helped revamp everything!

[Venatici]

Missing Stripes - Affects Kbr

Missing stripes affects only light brindles; there may be solid red areas where it appears the brindling is 'missing'. The area may be large, or small, but it removes generally only one area. The genetic basis of why this occurs is unknown, and for now is assumed to appear at random.

Gazelle - Em+

Gazelle desc

Pencilling - At+

Tan points are often very restricted to specific locations o the body of the dog, but occasionally a dog may have black marks that are present at the top of the toes. They may appear like small somatic mutations on the feet, but are actually markings called 'pencilling'. These black marks would change with any dilution; so a dog may have blue, isabella, or liver pencilling. In order for pencilling to show, a dog must have At+At+, as pencilling is recessive.

Heavy Ticking; Heavy Roaning - TT / RR

If a dog is homozygous for the ticking or roaning gene, that means it is considered 'heavy'. It is easy to tell the difference between a heavily ticked or roaned dog and a regular one, because it is easily distinguishable. An example of light ticking (Tt) is here and an example of heavy ticking (TT) is here. Many dogs that are light ticked (only one T) end up having spots around the legs and muzzle, where as a heavy ticked dog (two T's) will have ticking all over. An example of regular roaning (Rr) is here, and an example of heavy roaning is here. Notice in how the regular roaning you can see the white marks speckled and clear, while in the heavy roaning the white becomes mottled and it becomes so hard to see the white that it appears solid red.

Vitiligo - Unknown

Vitiligo, better known as 'vit', is a condition and not a marking; it is both genetic and non-genetic, but is where the skin or coat cells stop being able to produce pigment. This happens gradually over time, causing colored areas to turn white. It is sort of a conglomerate of different reasons, including an auto immune disease which attacks pigment cells, but does not cause any effects other than the loss of coat color. Occasionally, it heavily affects only the face; but more often than not it begins to spread to the rest of the body after time passes. The amount of coat and the coat color that turns white is often a sign as for what the cause of the vitiligo is, but more often than not it is just termed under this 'catch all' phrase.

Snowflake - Unknown

Most predominantly found on black coats, sweetnose mastiffs seem to have grabbed this trait from somewhere far in their lineage. They appear as small white spots on the coat, making them appear as if they have been sprinkled with snow. The cause is not known and is not linked to any gene. The spots remain the same throughout their life unlike the spreading of vitiligo, and is considered a marking.

Double Merle - MM

A double merle is a merle that is homozygous and has MM as it's gene. This gene severely impacts the dog, affecting all pigments and cause the dog to typically be mostly white. Occasionally they may have patches on the head and body, but they might not always have the allele for piebald; it is easier to tell when a double merle is also piebald, as they have more white than double merles without it. The double merle causes a loss of pigment that remains mostly on the upper areas of the dog's body, such as the top of the head, near the top of the back, and the top base area of the tail. This is very similar to the extreme white spotting pattern; however, sometimes these double merles can even be born a solid white, which occasionally can be very misleading. One easy identifier is that the nose is pink, and that the eyes are either blue or have heterochromia.
Double merles can be very pretty, but are frowned upon; they most commonly have health issues, such as eye defects, increased chance for sunburn and deafness.

Cryptic Merle - M+

Occasionally merle can be very difficult to see or might be hidden completely. One of these cases could be when a merle has very heavy markings; and example of this would be if a merle had large enough patches to hide the markings. This is commonly called a cryptic merle. Occasionally hidden merles may show the trademark blue eyes or pink nose, but it is often hard to tell. Cryptic merles are thought to be genetically passed down, so if a hidden merle were to breed and pass down it's gene, it is possible for the child to have the same hidden merle markings.

Somatic Mutation - Unknown

True to it's name, a somatic mutation is a mutation that occurs when the dog is beginning to form and the cells accidentally get too close and mix with each other. For dogs, if a pigment mutation occurs, splotches of other color may potentially show on the coat of the dog. Most commonly, these somatic mutations are seen as black patches on recessive red dogs.
Sometimes cells might change the rest of the genotype of the dog, in a pattern that is called 'mosaicism'; one of the most popular and rare forms is the chimera. The chimera is a single animal that occurred from two separate embryos combining; that means it has two sets of DNA that may show a combination of two different phenotypes. The distribution of the chimeric phenotypes is often 50/50, so it is split mostly evently.

[Venatici]

These links are to help with information on genetics and things about dogs; most of these are not strictly sweetnose mastiff based, but apply to sweetnose mastiffs!

Genetics
▪ Master Genetics Guide; includes all information about dog genetics, reference pictures, and more information about genotypes! Includes information about nose color, eye color, and the range of markings such as white!
▪ Dog Colors - Color Layers Guide; describes the difference between the three 'layers' to coat colors; white, black, and red.
▪ Dog Colors - Dilution, Merle, Brindle, and Masks
▪ Dog Colors - Color Spread; visually shows the spread of white (Series #9, S) and the spread of black (Series #7, A)
▪ Eye and Nose Color Guide; made by Leonca, it shows in a chart the color of nose and eyes matched with coat colors!
▪ Dilution Guide; made by Shock Therapy Stables, it gives information and pictures about liver, blue, and isabella dogs!
▪ Brindle Guide; made by Shock Therapy Stables, do note that it does not have information about brindling modified by the 'cat' gene in sweetnose mastiffs, but still is a good brindle guide!

[Venatici]

The Sweetnose Mastiff's history is mainly obscure; there is not much known about the breed.
The basis of what we do know is from their breed ancestry, and the interesting records concerning their name. They are known to be bred out of giant schnauzers, cane corsos, beauceron, and great danes. It is said some other mixes have been accidentally bred into the breed long ago, but there are no records or much prominence aside from those four.

The dogs are named after a famous scandal involving a German hunter-trader and her secret love with a French lady from high society. It had continued for months when suddenly they had stopped contact, and weeks later, the German hunter-trader sent a letter proposing along with a 'gift' of 50 mastiff and beauceron crosses, signed '50 sweetnoses for my love'. The gay proposal had then become a well known famous scandal- the two lovers were content with this arrangement until things turned south. The hunter-trader died in a mysterious accident, and in defiance the French woman carried on the 'sweetnoses' as a reminder of her fiance's legacy.

Soon after this incident, the country and gotten into turmoil. When wartime had come around, the French woman had given up some of these dogs 'for the good of her country'; she figured this way, her fiance's sudden death would not go in vain, and her memory forgotten. The military had continued the codeword 'sweetnose' to keep their secret of these massive dogs, which were a huge success and helped turn the tides. After the war the breed, becoming highly respected and esteemed for their bravery, had become officially named 'Sweetnose Mastiffs' for their namesake and huge size. Many had been given medals and recognized; the public soon grew to love the breed. The French woman, content that her lovers dogs would now also be loved by the public, released some of the dogs to the public and soon these giants became almost like animal familiars. They were then bred through different breeds and this resulted in their large size, quiet intimidation, loud warning bark, and obedience. Even through the generations of breeding however, they always remained happily eager to please and became remarkable extremely intelligent.
Interestingly enough, throughout the generations the dogs began to have hind double dew claws; making them visibly more different and easy to tell apart from other large dogs of their nature. The breed is used for many purposes and retains as a great guard dog, and an easy companion; while, of course, most of them retain their original purpose of being hunting dogs. Due to the care and caution taken by the couple, these dogs are surprisingly healthy and live an abnormally long time- even compared to smaller dogs.

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Sweetnose Mastiff Characteristics

Genetically speaking, a Sweetnose Mastiff is made out of mostly four main dog breeds: giant schnauzer, cane corso, beauceron, and great danes. Due to this mix of large breeds, Sweetnose Mastiffs boast a rather intimidating height and appearance. Males average from about 90 to 130 pounds, and average about 26-30 inches high; the females average about 80-110 pounds and 25-28 inches high. It is quite rare for a Sweetnose to be out of this average, because of how selective the breed had originally been and it is rare for a Sweetnose to be out of the norm for size. If a Sweetnose is not in the average height range, it is more common for it to be taller; because it is rare to begin with, it makes a small Sweetnose exceptionally rare.

There are some things that set Sweetnose Mastiffs apart from other things: the most noticeable being the famed double dew claws. No one is really quite sure how this happened and how it managed to stay in the breed, but it now is a trademark of the Sweetnose Mastiff. One of the other very noticeable things about the breed is the low amount of puppies they have. The highest amount of puppies from a litter recorded is four: and while it isn't uncommon for four puppies to occur, it has never been recorded to go higher than that. It is assumed that due to how selective the original creators of the breed were that over time the breed itself became a form of 'super breed'.

The breed itself is remarkably healthy due to relatively clean bloodlines: it outlives any other dog breed and has almost no health issues. The most major concern of the breed is currently unknown at this time.

Disposition

All Sweetnose Mastiff personalities vary based on their history and their owner. However, the breed standard marks them as loving dogs who are almost animal familiars: Sweetnose dogs are happy, eager to please, and are incredibly intelligent. They do well with lots of training and prefer mental exercise often or they get bored and become destructive, similar to a cattle dog. It seems interactions, either with humans or other animals, seem to keep them busy as they tend to study other living beings. They have a curious and adventurous nature about them and it is common for a Sweetnose to investigate something that either interests or confuses them: tied with the breeds bravery, they are known to get into trouble. Sometimes a Sweetnose has a devious streak, and will entertain themselves by purposely getting into trouble for the attention.
They are often very intimidating, but it is incredibly rare for a Sweetnose to be overly aggressive and uncontrollable. Any aggression mostly comes from protectiveness, as many Sweetnoses have war lineage, and are used as great guard dogs. However, the dogs are obedient and do well in exercises such as Schutzhund, and as long as an aggressive dog has someone they trust it is able to easily control the dog. This makes them a good companion for both families and single owners alike, given they will protect while still listening to the owners. Sweetnoses are often known for being sturdy and tolerant of children, making them a good family pet as well. They prefer socialization and seemingly 'people watch', and being around others helps the dogs. They do not do well in solitary, however, with the right occupation and trust a Sweetnose is able to stay home while its owners are at work: provided the owners keep to a schedule, otherwise these dogs are prone to worrying.

Diet

Sweetnose Mastiffs are quite hardy when it comes to food: due to how secluded food occasionally was during hunting season and the later on battles, they became adaptive to their food. Nowadays, Sweetnose Mastiffs can live peacefully off of regular dog food and not have many issues. They're generally not picky eaters, although its possible for exceptions, and most of them have a keen liking of any form of raw meat and will gladly eat that. As with all dogs, Sweetnoses will have different temperament and some may take a better liking to fish-based food, and others will take better to vegetable-based foods.