Patches

Meet Swatch from the About Time Litter

I need to work on making all the photos line up correctly, but for now this will have to do!

From the Dalmatian Club of America standard:

Patches are a disqualification. A patch is a solid mass of black or liver hair containing no white hair. It is appreciably larger than a normal sized spot. Patches are a dense, brilliant color with sharply defined, smooth edges. Patches are present at birth. Large color masses formed by intermingled or overlapping spots are not patches. Such masses should indicate individual spots by uneven edges and/or white hairs scattered throughout the mass.

Now- all that really means is that they can't be shown in conformation at dog shows. Some of the best performance - obedience, agility and tracking - Dals in the country have been and continue to be patches. They make GREAT pets and tend to be the cutest pups in the litter. I have seen patches around eyes, on ears and even on tails. While they can occur on other parts of the body but that is very rare.

And why Patch Mountain Dalmatians? - Patch Mountain is the mountain outside Linda's back door and between our houses. Named for old time settler Isiah Patch. And her first Dalmatian, Emily, had an ear patch. Patch Mountain Road becomes a discontinued road about 1/2 mile from my house and then you can ride a horse or ATV up to the old Patch Mountain Cemetery, viewing headstones from the 1700's.