Red Kai?
This is a bit random (and sorry that I'm sure I sound like an ignoramus), but I seem to recall a red Kai being shown quite a bit in UKC back when I was showing my Lapphund (so around 2002-2006). I believe the dog was a male.
I'm in Michigan, so I assume that the dog was located somewhere around here. The woman who had him had a number of other Kai as well, though the rest that I saw were always brindle I believe.
It's not particularly important, it just occurred to me because as I look through the pictures in threads here, I realize that I've not seen another red one...
I'm in Michigan, so I assume that the dog was located somewhere around here. The woman who had him had a number of other Kai as well, though the rest that I saw were always brindle I believe.
It's not particularly important, it just occurred to me because as I look through the pictures in threads here, I realize that I've not seen another red one...
Comments
JKC, NIPPO, AKC, and the Kai Ken Aigokai (KKA) do not accept cream Kai Ken.
The cream, or "red" as some US breeders call it, Kai Ken shouldn't be confused with the aka-tora Kai Ken, which is a red-brindle color and accepted by all Kai Ken registries.
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Here's his dogster page http://www.dogster.com/dogs/127907
He was shown quite a bit after DNA parentage testing proved he was a Kai.
He's a very dark cream. (Think fox red labradors.) Some other creams from Classy are lighter and more of what we normally think of a cream. (Think of typical labradors.)
@ayk Both are related to my Koda. I'm not sure what DNA testing you are referring to. There is no DNA tests for Kais. This sounds like a pretty wild rumor. Let us not spread it any further. Daiichi is 100% Kai and the grandfather to Koda and several other Kais on here.
The controversy was over whether or not Daiichi was considered an Akatora (as his registration shows) or a Cream (a faulted color). Because of his darkness and genes, it was argued (and the argument prevailed) that he was a red or akatora.
In Daiichi's case, there were people claiming that a Shiba was the father in order to have produced the color. (Marian also breeds Shibas for those people who don't know.)
I've heard many times from Marian that Daiichi had pale apricot stripes on top of the base color and that was the reasoning for still calling him a brindle.
My understanding is that whatever causes cream has a lesser effect on where the black hairs would normally be. That's why in cream Shibas there's a concentration of darker red hairs on the ear tips, the back, and the hind leg fringes. Apply this to the Kai and maybe, just maybe, there was some patterning going on.
It doesn't change the fact that according to the Japanese definition of akatora - now known clearly in many parts thanks to Shigeru - that this "apricot stripes" intepretation is way inaccurate.
Personally, I think the terminology used by Marian should be corrected in light of new info.
Daiichi is 100% Kai. I've never heard the argument against parentage, and trust me all the Kai people love to gossip about Daiichi. Some because they truly feel that he was a cream, and others because they were jealous of a champion. Again please respect that Daiichi is related to Koda. And I don't want people saying that my dog, or dog's parents, aren't all Kai. I hope you understand.
@brada1878 lolz
That being said, anytime any slightly 'different' color or trait appears, there are often rumors associated with it (even here in Japan). People will tend to assume, and then agree with rumor, that there is something amiss. The truth is that often when another NK breed has been added, it is often only slightly, and often mostly, unnoticeable. There are plenty of NK lines that are KNOWN to include NK from other 'breeds'. They were all one landrace at one time. Most of the Kishu in the Kanto region are known to have come from a line that included some Shikoku (I may be stone for mentioning this, but I have it on good authority, and in printed form lol).
That NEVER HAPPENED in my opinion, and I've known people in the American Kai group since I was 22 years old, old timers for here.
Furthermore, I have seen Mavrik listed on a Jindo site as a Jindo/Kai mix. To me, this is just wrong. Why put it out there that Mavrik and Daiichi are mixes? It offends me personally since I share a home with their prodigy. A 100% Kai.
Phew I've been holding that one in for a while now. Had to get that out.
I assumed he was "red" because it looked like red/sable (Ay) to me (and he looked to be about the color of a red Shiba), which is generally the genetics behind brindle dogs for the pattern to show up (at least in what I know about color genetics); he didn't look "cream" to me only because most cream (ee) Lapphunds are very pale and that's the frame of reference I had at the time.
We had a similar thing (colors doing well in the US that wouldn't win in their home country) with Lapphunds with saddle-markings for a while, though the breeders who had them made an effort to stop producing saddles and I haven't seen one shown or bred since then. So I suppose it happens in most breeds, especially in those with a relatively small population in a given country.
Thanks for the information!
I have never said the Mavrik, Daiichi, or your Koda are anything else but Kai. I am simply trying to clear up where Marian had come from in (wrongly) ID'ing the color and how it has evolved to become a UKC accepted color. I was also trying to explain why she also campaigned Daiichi so heavily - but that was also missed.
I have never listed Mavrik as a Jindo/Kai mix. The page has one column for purebred NK and another column for Jindo mixes. There *are* Jindo/Kai mixes, but they come out in the Jindo population. People have mixed in Kai to Jindos and passed them off as pure Jindos. They've also added in the Akita and Kishu and passed them off as pure Jindos.
And not that I want to get into all the politics, which I certainly don't understand or have knowledge of, but from my (outsider) perspective here, I don't actually see Daichii as having been called a mix here in this thread, and the Jindo site seems pretty clear to me: there's a column for pure bred Japanese dogs, and one for Jindo mixes. So....it seems kind of clear to me.....
But I do understand the desire not to drag up old arguments, so forgive me if I'm making this worse.
When I got my first Akita, I naively thought she was an unusual red-on-red brindle. Duh. I didn't realize when her undercoat was shed out, her banded hairs would make her look like a darker red striped pattern on a lighter red background. Maybe that's the same as the "apricot stripes"? My Akita looked red, not red with a black overlay, but her red hairs had the wild-banded pattern, with more bands of color than any other dog in a research project on banded hairs done by Jan Koler-Matznick some years ago.
@shishiinu - I agree with you, the inclusion of the cream-colored Kai Ken in the UKC is a dubious affair.
However, and I'm not defending the decision of the UKC to accept cream Kai at all, but in a closed gene pool that had been created from line breeding off just a few imported dogs (and hyper-selected for UKC showing), and was very near to being in an inbreeding depression, faulting for color only shrinks the population more and more.
So one could argue that the push to allow cream Kai in the UKC was done so to expand the Kai population and open up more potential "acceptable" breeding options. Keeping in mind, this was done before any new imports were brought over from Japan. Also, I am not saying this was the reason for the inclusion of the cream Kai in the UKC standard... I'm just putting it out there for consideration.
I would never breed or show a cream Kai Ken, but I am a KKA breeder not a UKC breeder (I couldn't give a sh!t about the UKC to be honest).
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How does one apply to the KKA to become a breeder?
There is some paperwork to fill out and it takes a while to process, so the sooner the better. I forgot the cost of the fees, but there is an initial fee, and then a yearly fee to be a KKA breeder.