Papillon Colors

White and black is pretty clear to understand. There is no other color on the body except those two colors. This is a picture of our Tallyho who was a white & black. img....

A White, Black & Tan (commonly called tri color) is basically a white & black dog with tan points. Those points appear on the cheek, over the eyes, inside the ears and under the tail. Within this color pattern, breeders will further identify the markings in common terms, but these terms are not formal, AKC terms. So a Classic Tri, or a Brilliant Tri, would be marked like our Candy, shown here.

img... Then you have the Minimal Tri, like our Abba. This simply means that her tan points are not as pronounced as Candy's are. These different patterns are not faults, and one is not judged better than the other.

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There is the most confusion in the White & Sable color. There are so many shades of sable, from the pale lemon up to the deep mahogony. Often breeders will describe their dog as a lemon sable, or a red sable, only to let you know what shade of sable the dog is, but the are all officially White & Sable dogs.

The sables all have black on them. This is what makes them a sable. They sometimes have black hairs throughout the body coat, or the black hairs appear on the face or in the ear fringe.

Here is a picture of Sandy who we describe as a fawn sable.

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Beauty is a red sable

img... Jason is a mahogany sable

img.... And then there is Peter Pan, described as a black sable

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Finally we have our White & Reds. On the reds, there is no other color but that. They cannot have any black on them.