On the 1st May 2002 Baylord Suni A.I. (Jeddah) whelped, presenting us with 5 unbelievable puppies.

Why unbelievable you may ask? Unbelievable, because in 13 years of breeding at Baylord we have never had an unassisted mating, Jeddah had a silent season, and with no obvious signs of love or lust being in the air, you can imagine our surprise when some weeks later I discovered that Jeddah had a bulging tummy!
But the best was yet to come.

We were in a bit of a dilemma as to who the father was, as normally we have only our own Max (Aust Ch Tailspin Revenge Imp UK) living at Baylord, but, we had for one week looked after Byron, (Baylord Igasho A.I), Jeddah's handsome red brother.

Having owned a majority of Black Blanket hounds, I was aware that this was a recessive colour, which like the Liver/Tan hounds required both parents to carry this gene for this colour to be produced.

I was also aware that Reds (unsaddled) was a dominant colour.
With this limited amount of "colour knowledge" I assumed that if Jeddah bore predominantly all red pups, then it would be obvious that the father was indeed Byron, and if the pups were all Black and Tan then the sire would be my Max.

Jeddah delivered 3 b/t males, 1 b/t female and 1 red female.
I accepted this as being Max's progeny, even though there was the 1 red, as this I thought would be quite natural being a dominant colour and the mother's sire being the red Tattoo.

I still had to confirm this by DNA testing. After enquiring with a few companies I decided to go thru the American Vetgen Canine Genetic Services via the Australian GenTest Company, as this was less obtrusive, and the swabs could be taken immediately.
I sent in what was required by Vetgen, being cheek cell swabs from the "proposed" sire - Max, the mother - Jeddah, and the red female pup that we named Tess.

The results, when finally thru was that Max was indeed the father. I was elated, as this was actually the mating I had planned for a little later on down the track.

Though it wasn't until I read on one of the Bloodhound computer lists that there was supposedly

"No way that 2 Black/Tan hounds will produce a Red!"

Tess's parents are both Black and Tan with Max being a Black Blanket, so how could this be? I queried VetGen via GenTest again, and this was their response:

"We looked Bloodhounds up in the dog genetics books by Little and Willis and both say about the same thing. From Willis "Liver and blue are infrequent suggesting that b and d are rare alleles in the breed and most animals will be BBDD in genotype." This means that two blacks could be carrying b and produce a liver (or Red in this case) but this allele is infrequent. The parentage is indeed correct to a probability of 99.9% based on the markers, which are chosen by the American Kennel Club (AKC). As with all things that are rare rather than nonexistent, it has to happen to someone."

"Because you also DNA profiled the dam, the results can be taken as much more conclusive than if you had not. However, parentage verification based on DNA genotyping operates on the basis of 'exclusion,' not inclusion. More than one dog can be included as a possible sire. The only way to know that the red dog is not the sire is to produce a genotype for him, and compare it to the pups, in conjunction with the dam's genotype. If the black/tan dog shows zero exclusions to the pups, then it is extremely likely that he is the sire, but until the red dog is tested, he cannot necessarily be ruled out. AKC policy requires DNA samples from all possible sires, the dam, and all pups when there is a possibility that a bitch was exposed to more than one male when in season.

DNA parentage testing was done on the red dog Baylord Igasho AI, so that this would prove beyond doubt, as to who the true sire was. Most importantly, I required the correct information, as this would affect my future-breeding program. The results have come back that the red dog is definitely not the father of Tess.

The facts as I have them, is that Max -is a black blanket and is from 5 generations of Black and Tan hounds. Jeddah's sire was a red dog, and dam was black and tan. On both sides there were a number of Black Blankets. Could the recessive gene that is required on both sides have something to do with it?

We are now in the process of testing the remaining pups, something that could take up to 3 months before we get the final results.

So how has this happened? I don't have the answer, but as we have shown, it is possible for this to occur.

After all this I think you would have to agree as to why we called this our "Unbelievable" litter, with Baylord Indiscretion, our Tess, being truly unbelievable.