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Coat Colours in the Mastiff Breeds
By David Hancock

Kennel clubs the world over are thoroughly confused by mastiff breeds. The German Mastiff (Deutsche Dogge, dogge meaning hunting mastiff, being categorized as a Working Breed rather than a hound – as is the Englische Dogge or Mastiff breed. The Tibetan Mastiff, a flock guardian, is both misnamed and wrongly classified, as is the Spanish Mastiff, a huge transhumance breed. The coat colours in the English breed of Mastiff are similarly mistreated, narrowed down, restrictively listed – against all evidence and in defiance of the gene pool. This ends up in this breed being denied its true colour range and bred as a giant yard-dog rather than the famous hunting mastiff or ‘heavy hound’ of past centuries. Sadly, it also results in throw-backs, valuable breeding material, being destroyed young or shunned as breeding sources, entirely from false concepts of Mastiff colours.

The coat colours in the mastiff breeds seem to be rooted in black and dilutions of black. Starting with the Bullmastiff, the Breed Standard calls for any shade of brindle, fawn or red, for the coat colour to be pure and clear, for the black muzzle to be essential, with slight white marking only permissible on the dog's chest (and more usually found in brindles). It is likely that the black mask and muzzle is dominant over no black mask/muzzle. The black mask/muzzle was at one time more often missing in dogs bred in the United States. Many early registrations here, including those bearing the Farcroft affix, did not feature the black mask and muzzle. The genetics of coat colours in the Bullmastiff are comparable with those for the Boxer, except that white markings are frowned on in the former. It is unusual in British show rings to see a Boxer without white feet, blaze and brisket; this collection of markings seems to be associated with light bone, a less substantial frame and eternal puppy-hood. It may be that the solid-colour brindle Boxer has been lost.

Common Colours

The standard of the Mastiff calls for three precise colours: apricot fawn, silver fawn or dark fawn brindle, with an obligatory black mask. These variations are also available, together with black, in Pugs. Little (1957) described the apricot fawn as "probably the ordinary reddish fawn" and stated that "The silver fawn may be due to the chinchilla gene..." Reds or sables of various shades are common in the bulldog, together with brindle. Robinson (1990) described the fawny colour known as 'fallow' as: "...may be red diluted by a chinchilla gene..." Walkley, in his book on the Bullmastiff, attributes the red colour in the breed to the Dogue de Bordeaux, despite the liver nose found in the French breed not manifesting itself in the Bullmastiff. (It is important too to keep in mind that the English occupied Bordeaux for over 200 years at a time when hunting mastiffs from England were prized. The Dogue de Bordeaux is much more likely to be an off-shoot of British stock than an influence on it.) The usual colours in the Bloodhound are red and black and tan; we know that Bloodhound blood is behind the Bullmastiff and is shown on some early pedigrees, e.g. Osmaston Turk's dam was half Bloodhound and half Mastiff.

The Pinning or Gripping Breeds

It is worth a look at colours in the other 'pinning' breeds. The standard of the Dogue de Bordeaux calls for 'red to fawn', allows white patches on chest and feet but not the face. The Cane Corso is required to be black, blue, chestnut, tawny, red or any of these colours brindled. Black and tan is allowed but not sought. The Perro de Presa Canario is required to be tiger, silver and golden brindle, from dark brown to light grey or solid colours ranging from sand to dark ochre. The Neapolitan Mastiff can be black, blue, all shades of grey, brown varying from fawn to red with brindling permissible on either of the latter colours. This is similar to the colour variations in the Great Dane, although harlequins occur in the latter. The mastiff of Broholm Castle in Denmark, or Broholmer, can be fawn or black. The Fila Brasileiro can be any solid colour or brindle. The Tosa is preferred in solid red, but white markings on the feet and chest are permitted; brindle, dull black and fawn are permitted but the red dog is very much favoured. The Perro de Presa Mallorquin is favoured in fawn, again with white markings permitted. The Boerboel from South Africa is favoured as a solid coloured dog: brindle, yellow (lion), grey, red-brown or brown; white markings are permitted, the black mask is not essential, light brown or yellow brown eyes are acceptable but the nose must be black, not liver-coloured.

Harlequin and Black Merle

The Great Dane can produce both harlequin (black patches on white) and black merle (black patches on grey) offspring. In 'Great Danes, past and present' of sixty years ago, Dr. Morell MacKenzie quotes breeders as saying: "I believe that it has always been recognised that a black or blue should be crossed in about every third generation to avoid harlequins being too lightly marked...Ch. Orus of Lockerbie, was a brindle-harlequin, in the days when such a colour was permissible. I consider a harlequin dog to a merle bitch one of the best matings." (Mrs Cowan). "Mrs Blackler bred some of the best harlequins out of a black bitch with a white blaze and white on her neck and feet...she once had a beautiful golden brindle puppy from a sire and dam who had been harlequin and black for generations." I have never seen a brindle-harlequin anywhere in the world but have seen mainly white dogs with brindle.

Wide Range

The Boerboel of South Africa is part-descended from the Brabanter bullenbijter, like the Danzigger bahrenbeisser, a brindle 'pinning' or 'gripping' dog of the Middle Ages in Northern Europe. In the 18th and early 19th centuries most of the portrayals of our Mastiffs and Bulldogs showed parti-coloured dogs, as a number of coloured prints of that time demonstrate, although fawn with a black mask also appeared from time to time. These fawn Mastiffs were more usually those portrayed with the landed gentry. In the middle of the 19th century, mastiff-type dogs were produced from Great Danes, St Bernards and the blood of large cross-breeds, like the Suliot dog of Lord Truro. This was conducted mainly in pursuit of great size. There is a wide range of colour and blood behind the Mastiff of England and, not surprisingly, the Bullmastiff. Pied Mastiffs, when cropping up in purebred litters, should be prized; there are irrefutable historical records of this coat colour being part of the Mastiff gene pool. It is noticeable that pied Mastiffs are stockier, more substantial and heftier than usual; this could be the old Alpine Mastiff/Smooth St Bernard blood re-emerging from its mid-19th century infusion into the English breed, e.g. at Chatsworth.

Far too many purebred dogs suffer from man-imposed limitations that lessen the variety, especially within a closed gene pool. Restrictions on colour reduce the size of a breed's gene pool and increase the perils of too-close breeding. A griege Weimaraner, a bay Hanover Scenthound or a sorrel Ridgeback look distinctive but such one-colour breeds come from a small base. The Mastiff does not and any restrictions on its breed livery are wholly whimsical. Mastiff expert, Wynn, was writing, over a century ago: 'Formerly the mastiff ran all colours, and were mostly pied with white...the question of colour looked at impartially, will at once be seen to be anything but a characteristic, all colours being admissable...for my own part I prefer the all-black, or the stone, or smokey fawn, with intense black ears and muzzle...' He was the best-informed Mastiff breeder of his day. Weckuff was a favourite Englische Dogge in medieval Germany and was mainly white. (Daisy, a purebred Mastiff - from champion stock, DNA-tested as 100% Mastiff, white with small cream patches, is now registered as such by the AKC. Janine Morffew's pied dog Dozer came from purebred stock too. The excellent Gammonwood Mastiff kennel in Australia has produced some fine pied specimens too). In 2015, the Dutch KC recognised pied as a Mastiff breed colour.

The Brindle Factor

A Belgian researcher, Marcel Wynants, claims to have traced the brindle colour in pure-bred Mastiffs back to the Marquis of Hertford's 'black' dog Pluto (a cross-breed), in the middle of the 19th century. But there are illustrations of brindle Mastiffs well before that time and plenty of outside blood has entered the breed's gene pool before and after that date. Both Greyhound and Great Dane blood could have been responsible for brindle in the neoteric Mastiff. Brindle is very much a feature of mastiff-like dogs, as the Perro de Presa Canario, the Fila Brasileiro, the Cane Corso, the Alano and the Fila de Sao Miguel demonstrate today. Looking at the inheritance of the brindle factor, mating two fawn Boxers produced 808 fawn-tan and 2 brindle pups. Mating two fawn Great Danes produced 60 fawn and 4 brindles. Six matings of brindle X brindle Boxers gave 33 brindles to 6 fawns. 566 pups from two brindle Great Dane matings produced 493 brindles and 73 fawns. Even without statistics from Bullmastiff litters, it is clear that genetically you could get brindle from mating two fawns but I do not know of such an occurrence. A brindle parent increases the likelihood of brindle offspring; a brindle Great Dane bitch mated to a black and tan Bloodhound produced nine pups, every one of them brindle.

Brindle Types

The brindle colour produces variations, often referred to as silver brindle (from the grey tone of the stripes), tiger brindle (light tan stripes) or red brindle. Fawn in the Bullmastiff is often described as apricot fawn, silver fawn or red fawn. When the latter displays a darker saddle, it is referred to as being stag-red. Although brindle was favoured in the Gamekeeper's Nightdog, red and red fawn are surprisingly difficult to pick up at night. Some of the old breeders mistakenly believed that the brindle colour indicated Greyhound blood and therefore greater athleticism. The Greyhound may well have obtained its brindle coats from past Bulldog crossings (e.g. Lord Orford's well-known experiment), although primitive tribal sighthounds in north and South Africa also display this colour. In Leighton's The New Book of the Dog (1912), WK Taunton, who kept a large kennel of Mastiffs for over forty years, wrote: "It has occurred that Mastiffs bred from rich dark brindles have been whelped of a blue or slate colour. In course of time the stripes of the brindle appear, but puppies of this colour, which are very rare, generally retain a blue mask, and have light eyes. Many such puppies have been destroyed; but this practice is a mistake...some of the best Mastiffs have been bred through dogs or bitches of this shade." Campaigns by breeders to restrict the gene pool by obliterating the rarer colours do harm to a breed.

The Darker Past of the Mastiffs

“Several terracotta models of large mastiffs from Nineveh, dated to the 7th century BC include preserved paint pigments indicating that they were originally coloured black, white, piebald or speckled.” Those words from Karunanithy’s Dogs of War of 2008 refer to the mastiffs so often claimed by Mastiff historians as ancestors of their modern breed. These advocates also embrace those in the contemporary breed of Mastiff, who reject any dog not displaying the KC-ordained coat colours, as either ‘not proper Mastiffs’ or insist that such ‘impurities’ only came from the introduction of outside blood. Surely anyone proud of their breed has to respect their whole past not just select those elements that reflect their prejudices. The breed is more important than that.

Bertrand de Guesclin, a 14th century French soldier, who fought for Charles V against the English during the One Hundred Years War and one of the finest leaders in battle of his time, was so respected by his English opponents that they called him 'The Black Mastiff'. This was an indication too of the regard for Mastiffs at that time. Little, in his The Inheritance of Coat Colours in Dogs of 1979, points out the many similarities in coat colour inheritance in Bulldogs, Mastiffs and Boxers but notes that both black and black-with-tan-point patterns are found in Bulldogs but not (today) in the other two breeds. In his British Dogs of 1888, Dalziel writes: “A correspondent in the Live Stock Journal spoke of a coal-black bitch of the Lyme Hall breed…it is evident that black was by no means an unknown colour at that time.” In The Kennel Encyclopaedia of 1910, J Sidney Turner writes, on this subject: “It may be news to present day breeders that black Mastiffs ever existed, but this was a recognized colour, as so also was white.” He goes on to give many examples of black Mastiffs being owned and prized for their physical qualities. Yet, today, in the Kennel Club's rings you will never see a black one. (When a black Mastiff, purebred, cropped up in an Australian litter, pressure from within the breed there led to this excellent specimen being castrated). Pied Mastiffs were frequently depicted in past portrayals of the breed, with a sister breed, the American Bulldog, often featuring such a coat colour.

Colour Prejudice

This is clearly not historically correct. The modern breed, according to its KC standard, can only be apricot-fawn, silver-fawn, fawn, brindle or 'non-standard', whatever that means. But Bewick, Buffon and Gilpin* depicted Mastiffs two centuries ago that were pied, black and white or mainly white. Foreign mastiff breeds, as pointed out earlier, like the Broholmer, the Neapolitan, the Fila Brasileiro, the Tosa, the Cane Corso and the Great Dane can feature a black coat. But in recent years, as already covered, a Welsh enthusiast, Gareth Williams of Bishopston, Swansea, with his wife Claire, has been promoting his line of black Mastiff, which he considers is a descendant of the Welsh holding dog or gafaelgi, used by butchers to seize wayward bulls and before that to pull down big game. Douglas Oliff in his The Mastiff and Bullmastiff Handbook of 1988, mentions two fifteenth century references which translate from Welsh as, 'what good are greyhounds, two hundred of them, without a gafaelgi' and 'the gafaelgi takes fierce hold of the stag's throat, and is black in colour'. Note the coat colour.

*In 1903, Edwardian Mastiff expert EG Oliver wrote an appraisal of the Gilpin portrayal, making valuable remarks too about the state of the breed at that time, which are set out in this image:

In his informative and valuable Practical Genetics for Dog Breeders, leading geneticist Malcolm Willis has written: "If a colour is associated with a specific problem (as with MM) (i.e. the merle gene, DH) then there is good justification for avoiding or banning the colour. Where no such biological excuse exists, bans are less justifiable...Those breeders whose breed allows any colour are advantaged and should preserve such advantages." Some colour prejudices come from quite primitive beliefs; Italian shepherds once regarded white pups as the only pure ones; Portuguese shepherds once believed that harlequin ones were pure; Turkish shepherds used to consider fawn with a black mask as a sign of purity. Having a very human preference for one colour is understandable; but, in a closed gene pool, it is unwise to ban a colour that once featured in that gene pool. Black Mastiffs are historically correct.

A famous Mastiff breeder, James Wiggesworth Thompson, of Southowram, Yorkshire, who started breeding Mastiffs in the early 1830s and whose family had several black Mastiffs, once wrote: 'I have seen mastiffs of exceptional character with more or less white on them, and think any judge ignoring a dog simply for this reason, would display fastidiousness to a fault.' It is this 'fastidiousness to a fault' that imposes quite artificial and historically incorrect limitations on coat colour in more than one distinguished breed. You can register silver, apricot, fawn or black Pugs but all of those coat colours except black in Mastiffs. The outside blood introduced into the Mastiff gene pool in the 19th century included that of the Great Dane and the Tibetan Mastiff, both of which can be registered as blacks. So, the black gene is acceptable but not the colour when manifested. Genetic diversity, especially in a closed gene pool, is highly desirable. I know of no geneticist who supports the pursuit of coat-colour exclusions. It is irrational; it lessens the genetic health of a breed.

Show Men not Dog Men

Half a century ago, two leading Mastiff breeders also kept Newfoundlands; in the 1960s one winning Mastiff carried a distinct Newfie head. I just wonder how many black Mastiff pups were found, and never admitted, in litters over the years. Our distant ancestors bred good dog to good dog and handed down superlative dogs to us as a direct result. It is absurd when a black Greyhound whelp is welcomed but a black Mastiff pup is destroyed entirely because of its coat colour. A really fit black Greyhound with the sun shining on its gleaming coat is a sight for sore eyes. There aren't many solid-black short-coated breeds and a majestic black Mastiff would be quite impressive. In past times, richly-coloured, near-black brindles like the Marquess of Hertford's Pluto (1830) and EG Banbury's Wolsey (1890) were strikingly good-looking dogs. Sadly, for dogs, far too many exhibitors in KC-sanctioned rings are show-men rather than dog-men; the rosette means more than the breed, with breed-improvement not on their agenda. At game fairs, country shows and companion dog shows I see pioneer-breeders trying, without doctrine or dogma, to produce quality dogs of a set type or a re-creation of a breed long spoiled by show-breeders. They will get nothing but scorn from the pedigree perpetuators, which is often totally unfair, because they regularly produce admirable dogs. Last year I saw several Mastiff-crosses that were far sounder dogs than the show ring specimens bearing the Mastiff name. The Mastiff is a breed that screams out for improvement, even a new start. The blind pursuit of pure-breeding when the results don't justify it is not an exercise in livestock breeding but misguided eugenics. Breed sanctity can become breed insanity.