Coat Color and Pattern in English Shepherds

Black and Tan

The black and tan pattern is regulated by the "agouti" gene locus, which is also responsible for producing shaded sable and saddle patterns. The black and tan pattern (sometimes referred to as "tanpoint") is recessive to the shaded sable pattern. Dogs that are black & tan inherit two "tanpoint" alleles at the agouti locus.

Because the agouti-regulated patterns require the production of two different colors of pigment (black and tan), the expression of these patterns will be suppressed in dogs that either carry the dominant black allele ("K") or two copies of the recessive yellow ("e") allele.

Wendy Brockish's Wes and Luke