The Sheltie Photo Album

This small album just contains pictures of coat colors allowed by the sheltie standard. Other colors do occur; you can find info about them in most sheltie breed books. Click on any of the thumbnails to see a larger jpeg of the picture. PLEASE NOTE: None of these pictures may be re-used without permission of the original owner. Unless otherwise indicated, these pictures are from Jane Hammett of Shadow Hill Shelties.

For another nice sheltie coat guide, check out the Sheltie Dreamcoat page. There's also a nice page on color inheritance at the Foremost Shelties page.

Here is a beautiful sable-and-white sheltie. This is Am/Can Ch. Linden Keynote Takin' It Easy. Both my shelties Tosh and Taz are also sable-and-whites. People often use terms to describe the actual shade of sable, so you will hear terms like "red sable" and "mahogany sable". Tosh is a mahogany sable and Taz is a red.

This is a tricolor sheltie. Tricolors have a solid black body coat, with tan on the face and legs, and varying amounts of white. This is Ch. Shadow Hill's Rio Grande.

Here is a very nice blue merle sheltie, Best in Show winner Ch. Shadow Hill's The Lone Ranger. There is a wide variety of appearances in the blue merles due to the shades of blue and amount of black in the coat.

Another blue merle, Ch. Shadow Hill's Satin Doll. Notice how much more feminine this bitch is than the last dog.

A bi-black sheltie, Sunebank Thriller, owned by Akadia Shelties (photo by Susan Ferroni-Keleher). Since the amount of white is optional, you will sometimes see biblacks that are almost totally black.

A bi-blue sheltie, Ch. Shadow Hill's Star Wars. A bi-blue is a blue merle without tan. This dog has so much solid black, he almost appears to be a bi-black, but the blue on his head indicates he is a merle.

Here's another nice bi-blue, with a very different appearance due to the pattern of merling. This is Fiego Night Mist of Himark, CDX, owned by the Guaraldo's of Himark Shelties.

This is a sable merle, Bronwyn Rockefeller, owned by Ruffian Shelties. You can't always tell a sable merle just by looking at them, but it's very important to know they carry the merle gene when breeding.

This is a double-dilute, or double-merle sheltie, Shadow Hill's The Magic Dragon. Double-dilutes have two merle genes, rather than just one as a normal merle does. As a result, their color is diluted out even more, often making the dog almost totally white (This dog, Puff, has a fair amount of color), and usually causing deafness and/or blindness, problems which are related to the two merle genes, and are not passed on to normal-colored offspring. The head is usually all white, helping to distinguish them from the color-headed white sheltie, which is normal in all ways, but has a white or mostly white body, with a normal colored head. Genetically, the cause of white in these two variations is totally different and anyone breeding shelties should fully understand the genetics behind this.

Here's a lovely example of the color-headed white. While they are penalized heavily in the show ring, whites have lots of fans in shelties, and will certainly make wonderful pets. This is Kon Tiki Desert Fox, owned by Judith Kelsey of Dury Voe Kennel. There's also a photo of a color-headed white on Sue Ann Bowling's excellent sheltie site. This dog has large body spots, making it a "piebald".

Someone discovered what appeared to be a brindle sheltie. Take a look at the pedigree and picture!