This is the judges guide for the new Tibetan Mastiff standard. Below the fold for those of you who aren’t here for that.
tibetan_mastiff judges study guide
Comments from Charlie Radcliffe, as posted on Facebook, shared with his permission:
Well, I will leap into the breach and write some comments. First for those of you who don’t know me, I am a geneticist by training and so have at least a nodding acquaintance with the genetic basis of color in TMs. Some of the colors are misclassified and others don’t really exist as a separate classification. The dog identified as a “brown and tan” is nothing but a sunburnt black and tan and is genetically indistinguishable from other black and tans. The dog identified as a double dilute is in fact a real brown (carrying to copies of the recessive b gene) and tan. So since the brown and brown and tan are allowed by the standard all these variations involving the b gene should be allowed but will be eliminated because of this mis-identification. The difference between the lightest gold dog illustrated and the banned “cream sables” is almost imaginary and one produced by some kind of modifier genes which also cause the very light tans on the black and tans. Consequently, these very same acceptable black and tans with very light tans (which seem to be preferred based on their prevalence in the guide) when bred to a gold dog will produce the dreaded but non-existent (genetically speaking) cream sables which will now be disqualified. The eyes in many of the dogs illustrated are too large and prominent to fit any definition of “small deep set eyes” which are mentioned in almost every standard and the back-skulls on several are too high and rounded to be typical or preferred.
(a couple spelling errors corrected)