Why do bassets and beagles have speckled legs?
Sunday, January 15th, 2012 at
8:10 am
I notice a lot of bassets have spotted legs and some beagles too… My basset/beagle has speckled legs. Does this mean at some point they’ve been bred with spotted dogs?
genes
It’s called “ticking”. No they haven’t been bred to spotted dogs! Some dogs have more than others, and dogs that are all black can actually have ticking too, but you just can’t see it.
It’s a very big hound trait, and as mentioned above it’s called ticking. Virtually all working hound breeds that have any white will have ticking (in show dogs this is usually reduced quite a bit), and it can vary from being extremely heavy to just a few speckles on the legs, like your dog. Another example of a dog with light ticking would be most English Pointers.
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/images14/bluetickW7pupsuntitled.jpg
This is a great example of how ticking can alter a dog’s appearance. The adult has so much black ticking she appears blue, but the newborn pups don’t have any ticking yet and have stark black and white coats.
http://www.southsidedogs.com/graphics/german_shorthaired_pointer_main.jpg
And another example of two dogs with identical coloring, but one is not ticked and one is.
Both pictures are the property of the websites I’ve linked to, not mine.