The first thing that must be appreciated is that the French Bulldog is a FAWN dog, or at least its base colour is. A brindle coat is a pattern not a colour. It consists of black hair overlaying the fawn ground colour. It is the amount of black stripes that can give the impression of rather black coat.

In the french coat there are two types of genes giving colour to the hairs and that’s almost black through light brindle to a tiger stripe, being from the palest cream to deep mahogany.

The white is not a colour but lack of pigmentation. It is in fact the lack of pigmentation in the hair that can give the impression of the white colour. The pied frenchie is therefore a brindle dog who has lost his pigmentation and just have more or less brindle spots left, which can be more or less dark, as they would be on a brindle.

Brindle is the dominant gene, which is a pattern not a colour, but remember that the black in a frenchie is always limited to the other genesTherefor they are never black even if they look like it.

Brindle is the dominant gene, which is a pattern not a colour, but remember that the black in a frenchie is always limited to the other genes, therefor they are never black even if they look like it.

In the white on frenchies it may appear the ticking gene, creating flecks or spots and is dominant but undesirable. This may often be seen when the coat is not in shape for some reasons (bitches giving milk, in seasons and so on).

One has to take into consideration the black colour on frenchies, and not let it be too dominated. Because being once lost, it cannot be produced unless reintroduced.

As mentioned before brindle is the dominant gene.Black masked fawns is the next in the series. Recessive to brindle, but dominant over pied. Fawn can be categorised as being from the palest cream to deep mahogany.

Pied is the lowest denominator with the extreme version producing an almost white dog. The pied gene actually inhibits the ability of colour to express itself as opposed to being a true whole colour in its own right, and this gene is actually for white spotting with various degrees of intensity providing different effect.

Now with pied, the brindle dominant, fawn recessive rule still applies. Because of this pied gene in the breed, varying degrees of white can be displayed on a brindle or fawn frenchie. From just a small white spot, to irish spotting pattern with chest, muzzle, forehead, belly, feet and tip of tail. Possibly displaying white in some of these areas. However because this pattern is able to be modified by the gene for complete body pigment and the piebald spotting gene, smaller or greater areas of white may be displayed.