one. We happened to get one obvious little show-stealer.
- Why the litter can still be “normal” even if only one puppy is brown
People often expect genetics to distribute evenly, as if a litter should come out like sorted marbles. That is not how it works. In a litter of six, one brown puppy is entirely believable if both parents carry brown. If I had told you ahead of time that each puppy had a 1-in-4 chance of being brown, one out of six would not sound impossible at all.
Small sample sizes create big visual surprises. Toss a coin six times and you might get four heads, one tail, and then one more head. Nobody calls the coin broken. The same logic applies here: a recessive trait can show up once in a litter and still fit perfectly within normal inheritance patterns.
- Brown can hide in a pedigree for
