Appearance
Though the most common colours are sable and blue merle, Shelties come in several other coat colours, such as this bi-black colour
Several coat colors exist. There are three main acceptable show colors, sable (ranging from golden through mahogany), tricolour (black, white, and tan) and blue merle (grey, white, black, and tan). Bi-Blues (grey, black, and some white) and bi-blacks (white and black) are less common but still acceptable. The best-known color is the sable, which is dominant over other colors. Shaded, or mahogany, sables can sometimes be mistaken for tricolored Shelties due to the large amount of dark shading on their coats. Another name for a shaded sable is a tri-factored sable and white. This names comes from the breeding of a shaded sable, which is a tri-color to a sable and white, or a tri-factored sable to another tri-factored sable. Another acceptable color in the show ring, but much less seen, is the sable merle, which can often be hard to distinguish from regular sables after puppyhood. Double merles, the product of breeding two merle Shelties together, can be bred but have a higher incidence of deafness or blindness or retardation than the other coat colors.[1]
There are few additional coat colors that are quite rare because they are unacceptable in the breed ring, such as color-headed white (majority of fur white, with the head 'normally' marked). There have been reports of a brindle Sheltie[2] but many Sheltie enthusiasts agree that a cross sometime in the ancestry of that specific Sheltie could have produced a brindle coat.
The size of a Sheltie (at the withers) can range from being undersize (under 13 inches) to being oversize (over 16 inches.) The average height of a Sheltie is 14-15 inches, with AKC standards listing a bottom height of 13 inches and a top height of 16 inches. To be measure either higher or lower than the standards will result in being dismissed from the conformation ring. Being dismissed three times will result in the dog being banned from any more conformation classes.[3]
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