The B series
B series only affects black pigment. The dominant allele is B, if we have (B-B) or
(B-b) alleles couple in the Brown series, black is not affected by this gene, but if
we have an Homozygous b, Black will turn in brown, also called liver, all the black
pigment of the dog wherever we may find it, even skin and nose, will turn from
black to Brown."Liver" dogs has amber eyes.

If we both find (b-b) and (d-d) liver will turn in to Lilac, also nose and skin, eyes
are always amber.

                                                                                         

The E series
Another dog colour's series is the E series, in E series we have 5 alleles, where one it's found only in cocker spaniel, and another only in Saluki and similar dogs, but we have Em, E and  e as possible alleles e in a lot of dog breeds.

 

Em is the top dominant, and it's the “black muzzle” allele, almost all German Shepherd today have homozygous Em, and it must be so. The black muzzle can cover muzzle from a little black stripe around lips to an all black face, covering sometimes also chest and legs like in some Belgian Malinois.

 

E is the second allele in dominance chart, and it let the Agouti series come out but without black muzzle (ex collies).

e is the less dominant one, the “recessive fawn” allele.

 

When two e meets, in an e homozygous dog, we will not have black pigment on the hair of the dog. This combinations inhibits production of black Colour in the hairs and only hairs, not in skin nose or eyes. All Hairs will turn in fawn. How much "fawn" it  will depends always from I gene, as we have seen before. Well, this is the combination causing White Swiss Shepherd colour, once present in German Shepherd dogs, because of Greif, Horand's Grand dad, was an (e-e), recessive fawn dog,and now almost disappeared, even if sometimes a “white” pup will born from 2 coloured dogs. for this reason, crossing a white Shepherd with a coloured shepherd one, will almost never generate white pups, it will append only of the coloured one carries e in E series.This is also the Golden retriever, yellow labrador retriever colour (with different I value), or Samoyed, italian “;aremmano” dog or so on.

 

Well, both d, b and e, even if are not appreciated, are still in the German Shepherd dog genome and sometimes liver, blue, Lilac or recessive fawn (white) dogs can born. As we told before it's not easy to remove recessive alleles because they can not come out for a lot of generations until one dog carrying it meets another one. And, as it's only a colour problem, it doesn't make sense to not reproduce a possible carrier of one of these 3 recessive alleles if the dog is a good and healthy dog. it's more easier to take away dominant alleles, like brindle one (Kbr), once present and now disappeared in the breed.People talk about diluted colour health problems, but it's not so. Diluted dogs are healthy dogs, only not appreciated.

 

In some breeds such as dobermann, 80% of diluted dogs are affected by colour dilution alopecia, this can be true, probably diluted allele it's associated with another allele, or, it's a different allele because of mutations sometimes comes out, and we can get not identical but with similar effects mutations.For ex. we have 3 different distinct b (brown) alleles, with similar effect, in combined together they produce liver dogs even if we have 2 different b allele type. By the way we have also diluted healthy breeds such as Weimaraner (always blu/lilac) , a lot of pit bull and amstaff are blue and not only... and they all are healthy.

 

So, it doesn't make sense to put to sleep unwanted colour pups, as they are normal and healthy

dogs!