I always find it ridiculous

*blackrose · Oct 24, 2012

That is the absolute truth. LOL

If it wasn't for the fact that I don't think I could handle loosing an older dog in a year or three, especially with Dameon and Rose being seniors themselves and getting to the point they probably won't be around too much longer, I would totally considering adopting this guy:

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/23854992

Or this guy:

http://www.petfinder.com/petdetail/18877279

They sound like such good ol' boys.

Dekka · Oct 24, 2012

misfitz said:

Not likely.

Wild type simply means the colour found in the wild. Now it might be true in some cases in some species. I think its more the human hard wired desire to make pattern connections. That and lines ie some big breeder who liked drivey dogs also liked a particular coat colour. If that breeder is influential enough that can have an effect on the entire breed for a time. It can be long term if people keep the 'idea' going.

Tortie cats are simply a 'mix' of black and orange (the reason you see both colours is due to the bar body effect on X chromosomes) There is no genetic difference between a calico cat and a tortiseshell one. Yet people like to describe personality differences to the cats.

Also take yellow labs... the base colour for ALL labs is yellow. Black is epistatic to yellow. Its a SINGLE allele that makes a black lab black. I highly doubt that that one allele also makes personality changes with the pigment (as that is all it really does)

Chestnut horses, whilst I like to joke 'oh no I have a chestnut tb mare' implying the worst. Yet I have never found a measurable difference and most horse people I know use it more as a joke than a reality. As well chestnut is highly recessive (loses to everything) so many a horse out there carries the chestnut genes. In fact a palamino horse IS a chestnut that also carries the dilution gene. But if being chestnut made temperament issues, then paliminos would also have them.

Also the only difference between a black horse and a bay one is the agouti gene.. but many a chestnut horse also carries that gene, but its never expressed as there is no black.

So I don't put much veracity in the theory that colour is directly linked to personality.

AdrianneIsabel · Oct 24, 2012

Shamoo was adopted at 10 and she'll be 15 in March. I am pretty sure we have at least another year or two out of her most days.

I would totally own a lab, once it's trained. Training them more often than not hurts my head, I'm totally a "what can I do for you?" dog lover and all of our labs at work are like "hahahahaha HI what can you do for me silly hum- OH MY GOD YOU HAVE A TREAT. GIVE IT. GIVE IT, NOW!" You have to love them though, really, they are some tough mofos. What other dog will dive into below freezing water for a bird they can't even eat over and over again (besides the chessies, shut up). Nuts I tell ya.

milos_mommy · Oct 24, 2012

I've worked with A LOT A LOT A LOT of labs, and I have never, ever found the "black labs are wilder" too be true. At all. I've known one...maybe two really wild black labs, and a handful of INSANE yellow labs. And one nutjob chocolate lab. And then some pretty calm dogs of all three colors.

AdrianneIsabel · Oct 24, 2012

Well that is because black labs are known for being the calmer ones.

milos_mommy · Oct 24, 2012

AdrianneIsabel said:

wait, really?? :rofl1: I thought black labs were the crazy ones?? if I had it backwards then yeah, that seems pretty legit

Greenmagick · Oct 24, 2012

hehe, I always heard yellow were mellow, black were active, and chocolates were nuts

I will never forget a training eval we had come into the shop one day. Older couple in their 70s. They were very concerned they had a defective puppy because "he is just so hyper!" He was a 12 week old lab:/ "But labs are so good! HE is not good!" sigh

AdrianneIsabel · Oct 24, 2012

Yellows are silly but good dogs, I rarely see anything but a good (serious) black lab, and every chocolate I meet is nuts. LOL Mind you people bring "naughty" & needs training dogs to me and I get a lot of chocolates, a few yellows and no blacks at all. My experience may be very twisted.

milos_mommy · Oct 24, 2012

Working in day care and cage-free grooming, we had tons of all colors come in. Lots of mellow of all colors, one or two nutty blacks, one or two nutty chocolates, and a handful of INSANE yellows. But thinking about it, I think all the nutjob dogs were either one or two years old or from bad situations, and the mellow dogs were a little older (5-6 +)

ETA: I will say the most destructive dog I've ever met was a 1ish year old yellow lab. I have never in my life imagined a dog could do that much damage to a dog-proofed area. He yanked the glue up from the linoleum, scraped the paint off a metal bench with his teeth, ate a hole in the sheetrock in a span of 30 seconds and thought bitter apple spray was a treat, regularly picked up and threw around a large metal water bowl (full of water), and when we finally managed to ACTUALLY dog proof the area, he tried to eat the plexiglass wall. Broke through a doggy-gate. He gave me the nastiest bruise on my boob jumping up and grabbing it to "play", as well as nipping me on the face while I was standing (I'm 5'9") and ripping various clothing items. He was The World's Worst Dog. His owner walked him on a halti with a flexi-lead, so that should give you some idea of how good his direction at home was.

I'd still get a lab

Miakoda · Oct 24, 2012

We had a black Lab (field bred) female named Snowflake. That about sums it up.

Hershey (yeah, I know...original name and all that), here full brother and also black, was sooo calm and laid back. He had energy, but knew when it was time to train, time to work, time to play, and time to relax.

Snowflake got kicked out of training with the trainer telling us, "Hey, at least you've got one great field dog there in that male one." Oh, she brought me many a Kildee birds, all alive and mad as hornets once I retrieved them from her mouth (she had such a soft mouth, and ne'er a feather would be out of place).

I was afraid when Hershey died, that she would pine for him. Nope. She lived another two years, and even at the ripe old age of 15, she was hyper, excitable, and totally in your face and non-stop. Just thinking about her makes me fatigued. LOL

Sadly, their popularity has led to a decline in temperament. I see many with just plain old nasty temperaments. At my former clinic, a sign even had to be put up for new assistants/techs that read "Never assume a Lab is friendly!". Too many people had gotten bitten, completely unprovoked, by assuming the Labs were all inherently friendly.

On top of it all, my two most severe dog bites (1 to the left forearm and 1 to the right groin) came from Labs. The arm occurred when I was out for a jog and a man didn't feel that friendly Labs needed to be restrained/contained on a leash or behind a fence. Instead, I was attacked while jogging. The second one occurred when trying to break up the infamous dog fight between Lab and Mia. I've been bitten one other time by a Lab, when I walked into an exam room, leaned a hip against the table to start talking to the owner (getting history, asking why there, etc.), and the dog just lunged and grabbed my pants leg. And we had a horrible incident in the waiting room when a Lab grabbed a 4-yr-old girl, thank heavens by the back of her jacket and NOT by her actual spine!, and starting trying to drag her and shake her. It was awful, and it took me and another vet choking it off to get it to let go.

So, moral of the story is that the Labrador Retriever is a wonderful breed, but it doesn't mean that every single Lab out there is automatically a kid-loving family friendly beast.

Flyinsbt · Oct 25, 2012

Dekka said:

A tortie or calico cat has a copy of the sex-linked orange trait (O) on one X-chromosome, and not on the other. A male cat, which will typically only have one X, can't be tortie/calico, so if they get the orange trait, they will just be orange. A female cat needs to carry that trait on both X chromosomes to be orange instead of tortie/calico.

So the orange male cat has similar color genetics to a tortie female, and if there are behavioral traits linked with the color, then they should certainly apply to the males too. As well as the orange females, if the behavioral traits are linked to that color trait, since they have it twice, I would expect similar behavior from them.

Which makes it a little puzzling to me that tortie cats are so feisty, but indeed they are. (I don't draw behavioral differences between tortie & calicos, my experience is that calicos have the tortietude too) I've been around an awful lot of cats, and that is my experience. I haven't experienced as many orange females, because they really aren't as common. I can say that the scariest cat I've known was an orange female, but she was also declawed, which can have a bad effect on a cat's temperament.

Orange males, OTOH, I've generally found to be among the most placid of cats. So I have no explanation for it.

However, in fetal development, the neural crest cells are precursors to melanocytes and to neural cells. So, it's not impossible to wind up with a link between color and behavior.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871368/
The cases listed in that article are obviously cases of serious abnormalities, rather than behavior variation, but it's certainly possible that there could be more minor examples of effects on behavior.

crazedACD · Oct 25, 2012

Miakoda said:

We had a black Lab (field bred) female named Snowflake. That about sums it up.

Hershey (yeah, I know...original name and all that), here full brother and also black, was sooo calm and laid back. He had energy, but knew when it was time to train, time to work, time to play, and time to relax.

Snowflake got kicked out of training with the trainer telling us, "Hey, at least you've got one great field dog there in that male one." Oh, she brought me many a Kildee birds, all alive and mad as hornets once I retrieved them from her mouth (she had such a soft mouth, and ne'er a feather would be out of place).

I was afraid when Hershey died, that she would pine for him. Nope. She lived another two years, and even at the ripe old age of 15, she was hyper, excitable, and totally in your face and non-stop. Just thinking about her makes me fatigued. LOL

Sadly, their popularity has led to a decline in temperament. I see many with just plain old nasty temperaments. At my former clinic, a sign even had to be put up for new assistants/techs that read "Never assume a Lab is friendly!". Too many people had gotten bitten, completely unprovoked, by assuming the Labs were all inherently friendly.

On top of it all, my two most severe dog bites (1 to the left forearm and 1 to the right groin) came from Labs. The arm occurred when I was out for a jog and a man didn't feel that friendly Labs needed to be restrained/contained on a leash or behind a fence. Instead, I was attacked while jogging. The second one occurred when trying to break up the infamous dog fight between Lab and Mia. I've been bitten one other time by a Lab, when I walked into an exam room, leaned a hip against the table to start talking to the owner (getting history, asking why there, etc.), and the dog just lunged and grabbed my pants leg. And we had a horrible incident in the waiting room when a Lab grabbed a 4-yr-old girl, thank heavens by the back of her jacket and NOT by her actual spine!, and starting trying to drag her and shake her. It was awful, and it took me and another vet choking it off to get it to let go.

So, moral of the story is that the Labrador Retriever is a wonderful breed, but it doesn't mean that every single Lab out there is automatically a kid-loving family friendly beast.

Out of the millions of dogs I've handled, I've been aggressively bit by a lab and a bichon. Both had clear warning signals and I underestimated them both, but yeah.
I definitely notice a difference in colors in Labs...Chocolates are just more 'out there' zany, kind of clueless

. Blacks always seemed more settled/have a working frame of mind. Actually I would say the 'worst' dogs I can think of working in boarding kennels was a pair of chocolate labs. They were absolutely nuts, destructive, "**** and sliders", that came in on a monthly basis.

Romy · Oct 25, 2012

Flyinsbt said:

My aunt's orange cat is named OD, short for Orange Devil.

My grandma searched forever specifically to find an orange female cat. Her name is Kit and she is the debil. Seriously. She launches herself at people and bites the crap out of them. Really nasty, but for some reason my grandma adores her. This is in spite of the horrendous bites because she gets attacked too.

The same aunt with the orange cat had a tortie and currently has a calico. They're both pretty heinous too. Priss the tortie was seriously the most evil angry cat I have ever seen, and that's saying a lot. She'd walk around with her ears back just hissing and snarling and spitting, if you kept trying to pet her she'd snarl so hard she'd snort like a pig which was pretty hilarious. But then she'd try to hurt you. She wasn't just crazy "aah attack >chompchompchomp<" she would really really try to injure people. Sadly, she lived for almost twenty years. My aunt hated her so much but took awesome care of her. Even bought her special canned food and stuff.

StephyMei1112 · Oct 25, 2012

From what I've heard...

The black ones are supposed to be the calmest, most versatile and have a good work ethic. The chocolates are a little more bouncy/spazzy, and the yellows are more "lap puppy"ish. *shrugs* I've never handled a Lab nor do any of my friends/relatives currently own one so don't hold me to it.

They are the most popular breed in my City. I think a newspaper did a poll a few years back and they came in at 1# with over population of 25,000 here or something like that....

Indeed very versatile, trainable, intelligent, and precise - yet boisterous, challenging, somewhat stubborn, and mischievous. Eh, I don't know much about them other than what I've seen so yeah...

They aren't the dog for me at all - great breed, but by no means the easiest...

Dizzy · Oct 25, 2012

They're not orange, they're ginger.

Fact.

Dekka · Oct 25, 2012

Flyinsbt said:

A tortie or calico cat has a copy of the sex-linked orange trait (O) on one X-chromosome, and not on the other. A male cat, which will typically only have one X, can't be tortie/calico, so if they get the orange trait, they will just be orange. A female cat needs to carry that trait on both X chromosomes to be orange instead of tortie/calico.

So the orange male cat has similar color genetics to a tortie female, and if there are behavioral traits linked with the color, then they should certainly apply to the males too. As well as the orange females, if the behavioral traits are linked to that color trait, since they have it twice, I would expect similar behavior from them.

Which makes it a little puzzling to me that tortie cats are so feisty, but indeed they are. (I don't draw behavioral differences between tortie & calicos, my experience is that calicos have the tortietude too) I've been around an awful lot of cats, and that is my experience. I haven't experienced as many orange females, because they really aren't as common. I can say that the scariest cat I've known was an orange female, but she was also declawed, which can have a bad effect on a cat's temperament.

Orange males, OTOH, I've generally found to be among the most placid of cats. So I have no explanation for it.

However, in fetal development, the neural crest cells are precursors to melanocytes and to neural cells. So, it's not impossible to wind up with a link between color and behavior.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871368/
The cases listed in that article are obviously cases of serious abnormalities, rather than behavior variation, but it's certainly possible that there could be more minor examples of effects on behavior.

I never said it was impossible, simply unlikely there was a significant link between colour and behaviour.

In my personal experience the most feisty cats have had the 'siamese' pattern and some of the calmest have been calico cats. So until there is a study vs a survey on behaviour I shall go with the idea that almost all other factors over shadow any small effect colour might have.

(oh and ya I know how calico cats get their colour in utero I think it was covered in adv mol bio amongst other things

)

Flyinsbt · Oct 25, 2012

Dekka said:

I don't have any idea what you've studied, but I explained it so that other people would know, because not everyone does. (talking about the Barr body effect isn't super explanatory to most people)

ie, when my friend fostered this cat:

Everyone was speculating on what color the kittens would be. These are intelligent people, they just haven't had cause to learn about cat color genetics. Mind you, she did do a good job of producing as much variety as possible.

If you don't know the genetics, talking about potential linkage between behavioral and color genes isn't going to make a lot of sense.

Siamese cats are known for having a bit of an edge to them, which is a breed trait, and I'd imagine high content Siamese mixes could have that trait too, which could be why you associate feistiness with that coloration. Ragdolls have the same pattern, and are particularly noted for being the opposite of feisty, so there is no link between the coloration and temperament, it's just something that is in a certain breed.

The feisty torties, OTOH, are typically of the "DSH"/"DLH" type. Cats of no particular breed. So if there are similarities of temperament, there has to be another explanation. There are individual cats who don't appear to have got the feistiness (the orange female in that photo was not feisty. she had some serious issues, and could have been a bit brain damaged, but wasn't feisty), which is reasonable, because other factors can obviously outweigh any given factor.

In several years of dealing with cats at a busy veterinary practice which did boarding, though, so a whole lot of cats (being placed under stressors which would magnify any feistiness of temperament), I did note that the tortie attitude which my coworkers told me about was generally true. I can't explain it, but I definitely observed it.

Dekka · Oct 25, 2012

Ya I figured that, but I had also touched on it so was not quite sure if you were talking to be directly (due to quote) or not so just threw that in there

I <3 all things genetics (particularly anything epignetic)

That was kind of my point.. it has a greater likelyhood to be due to lines (or breeds) than directly related to colour.

Too bad one couldn't get the funding for a study on that. It could have larger implications if found to be true. It could further the understanding of the genetics of behaviour.

Doberluv · Oct 25, 2012

Flyinsbt said:

I don't have any idea what you've studied, but I explained it so that other people would know, because not everyone does. (talking about the Barr body effect isn't super explanatory to most people)

ie, when my friend fostered this cat:

Everyone was speculating on what color the kittens would be. These are intelligent people, they just haven't had cause to learn about cat color genetics. Mind you, she did do a good job of producing as much variety as possible.

If you don't know the genetics, talking about potential linkage between behavioral and color genes isn't going to make a lot of sense.

Siamese cats are known for having a bit of an edge to them, which is a breed trait, and I'd imagine high content Siamese mixes could have that trait too, which could be why you associate feistiness with that coloration. Ragdolls have the same pattern, and are particularly noted for being the opposite of feisty, so there is no link between the coloration and temperament, it's just something that is in a certain breed.

The feisty torties, OTOH, are typically of the "DSH"/"DLH" type. Cats of no particular breed. So if there are similarities of temperament, there has to be another explanation. There are individual cats who don't appear to have got the feistiness (the orange female in that photo was not feisty. she had some serious issues, and could have been a bit brain damaged, but wasn't feisty), which is reasonable, because other factors can obviously outweigh any given factor.

In several years of dealing with cats at a busy veterinary practice which did boarding, though, so a whole lot of cats (being placed under stressors which would magnify any feistiness of temperament), I did note that the tortie attitude which my coworkers told me about was generally true. I can't explain it, but I definitely observed it.

I, for one... am very interested and you obviously are very knowledgeable on the subject. I'm glad you explained it, although it still is a little fuzzy in my brain. But then, that's in my genes.

It is quite talked about in the Doberman world that the reds tend to be "nicer" than the other colors. And that's just because there was a red way back when with a phenomenal temperament and it just passed through the lines. I don't think it's a direct link to color, just that this dog or maybe it was a few happened to be super cool dogs.

Romy · Oct 25, 2012

Dekka said:

That would be really awesome. I'm curious how you could design an experiment though, what behaviors would be classified as "feisty" and how would you quantify temperament overall? The only way to guarantee that each cat is responding to the same provocations (?) is to have a standardized test like the TT, and set up identical test rooms.

But then you're testing the cats under extreme stress, because cats don't typically transition to strange environments very easily. So you're not testing their true temperaments when they are at ease and just doing their cat thing. You're testing their threshold and how they respond to stress.

I always find it ridiculous

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