Coat

It is seldom a good dog can be a bad color. If I owned a good one I would not bother my head about his color.

A. G. Cowley

In the first revision of the English Standard, and in all subsequent English Standards, the list of colors was reduced to the following: black, wheaten, and brindle of any color. The 1993 American Standard adopted this succinct list of colors but added language allowing for sprinklings of white or silver hair that may appear in black or brindle coats, and for a small amount of white hairs on the chin and chest.

When the Scottie became a show dog, black became the increasingly dominant color of the breed. Two factors were responsible for this. One was the public fancy. Most early breeders supported themselves, in whole or in part, by the sale of their puppies. If the public wanted black puppies, these breeders had little choice but to produce black puppies.

Another important influence on color in the 1930s was the fact that English Champions Albourne Admiration and Heather Necessity were black. These highly successful stud dogs passed on their color along with their numerous other virtues.

The brindle partisans struck back, claiming  that brindle was the original coat color. This notion is preposterous because it is impossible to single out the "original" Scottish Terrier. Volume 1 of the Stud Book of the Scottish Terrier Club (Scotland) was published in 1895 and contains 531 registrations, including many pillars of the breed. While the many shades of brindle are the most common colors represented, there were also blacks and wheatens. In fact, the range of colors listed in that Stud Book include some rarely seen today, such as red, gray, and what seems to have been black and tan.

The writings of Dorothy Caspersz and Dr. Fayette Ewing are often cited in support of anti-black sentiment. In fact, both were adamant that all colors were equally beautiful. While Caspersz had a personal preference for brindles, she argued vigorously that there was no special merit in color as long as white was discouraged. Ewing developed an interest in wheatens and imported the first wheaten to achieve an American championship. He did not prefer the color, but he had a strong interest in ensuring its survival.

McCandlish and the other early writers made no comment on any relationship between coat color and coat texture. By the 1930s, however, when black had become so wildly popular, breed experts decried the relative softness of black coats when compared to brindles. (Wheatens, being sufficiently rare, seemed to be regularly omitted from these discussions.) There is no denying that many breeders of that era, in their haste to meet the demands of a fickle public for black puppies, must have ignored the importance of coat texture. Today, however, good (and bad) coats come in all colors. All the evidence points to the fact that color is not genetically linked to coat texture or density.

>Wheaten color can range from a pale cream color to a deep red. No acceptable color should be penalized or rewarded since there is no preference in the standard for lighter or darker shades of wheaten. It is important to remember that wheaten hairs are darker at the tip and lighter at the base so there will always be a "water mark" where the body coat blends into the furnishings. A complete absence of such could be an indication that the coat color is not entirely natural in origin.

Pictured below are three examples of correct color: black, wheaten, and brindle.