White-sable Japanese Chin.

           I am not attracted to Japanese Chins of white-sable color with a black mask on the face. Not only for this reason, I cannot bring myself to perceive most of the White-Sable Japanese Chins as representatives of the Japanese Chin breed.

           Observing photos of Japanese Chins (Japanese Chins of official kennel breeding in different countries) of white-sable color on the Internet, quite often I see a manifestation of a black mask on the face of Japanese Chins of white-sable color. It is difficult to judge how often such a combination is found in Japanese Chins, since the standard stipulates the presence of a white Japanese Chin on the muzzle and this must be of a large volume, which hides the area where the black mask is located on the dog's muzzle. And only in those Japanese Chins, in which the area of white on the muzzle is reduced, a black mask is often visible. One can justify the presence of a black mask in the white-sable Japanese Chins by the fact that the Pekingese breed has a sable color with a black mask on the face, and the Pekingese is an integral part of the very distant ancient ancestors of the Japanese Chin. But to what extent is the presence of a black mask on the face of the Japanese Chin acceptable by the standard today? By the way, the standards of different countries do not say anything about the desirability or undesirability of having a black mask on the muzzle of a white-sable Japanese Chin.

          The FCI standard, in addition to the white-black color, allows the only color white-red, while in the rings we see dogs of a white-sable color, in the pedigrees of which their color is recorded as white-red. FCI makes no distinction in the standard in the color white-red into two separate independent colors - white-red (with the recessive gene "ee", which causes a pure red color of varying intensity and not a black nose) and white-sable . FCI has combined these two colors in the Japanese Chin standard under one definition - white and red. This is completely wrong, if only for the reason that the inheritance of these colors is different, and the incorrect indication of the white-sable color in the pedigrees makes the pedigree an unreliable document.

          Dogs of white-sable color are actively used in breeding. But it should be admitted that we do not often see the white-sable-colored Japanese Chin with a head like that of the white-black chin. The leader of the standard head conformation in kennels is the traditional white and black Japanese chins. Japanese Chins of white and sable color, carriers of wild color agouti, for the most part are much inferior in the quality of the structure of the head  to Japanese chins of white and black color. The structure of all components of the head - skull, muzzle, the location of the ears on the skull, with rare exceptions, do not correspond to the Japanese Chin standard. Such dogs are more similar to the Japanese Chin and Pekingese mestizos. It is a great success for the breeder to get in the breeding work of the kennel a Japanese Chin of a white-sable color with a with head structure like that of a Japanese chin of a white-black color. But fixing the standard heads in white-sable Japanese Chinas and making them permanent in many generations of descendants is not a feasible task. The type of mestizo always wins and the conformation of the head of the Japanese Chin demanded by the standard eludes breeders.

          In addition to the problems of head structure, Japanese Chins of white-sable color have problems of quality, purity of red color. The presence of a large zone of black pigment in the hair makes the perception of the white-sable-colored Japanese chin unaesthetic. There are Japanese chins of white-sable color, in which the spots on the body look like spots of a separate red color and next to a separate spot of black color. Above, I wrote about a black mask on the muzzle of Japanese Chins of a white-sable color.

All these hereditary exterior problems of the white-sable-colored Japanese chins, when such dogs are introduced into the breeding program of the kennel, often destroy all the achievements of the breeder.

I have no right to exhibit here other people's photos of Japanese Chins, which are discussed above, but everyone who is engaged in the Japanese Chin breed understands what I wrote about.