this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2025
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She's a rescue so we think she's part border collie and part malinois. She was apparently fed on dry food before we got her and her skin was pretty rough and flakey. Since having wet food her coat is wonderful and smooth, and she is thriving.
Could be part Belgium Shepard. They are pure black.
Malinois have so many variations in coats
Malinois are Belgian shepherds
It's a weird situation, in Belgium, the Malinois, Laekenois, Tervuren, and Groenendael are all considered part of the same "Belgian Shepherd" breed, just with different coats, basically the same as how there are short, wire, and long-haired dachshunds, or black, yellow, and chocolate labs.
In the US (and probably some other countries) they're generally regarded as 4 separate breeds.
But yeah, malinois markings are kind of all over the place. As long as there's some black on their face and some brown/tan elsewhere, that's pretty much right.
Dog genetics get really weird, malinois shouldn't really carry the genes for an all black coat, and I think with the Groenendael the black coat is tied to the long hair gene (do not quote me on that) so you can't really have one without the other.
But mix in a splash of any other breeds and just about everything you think would make sense with color genetics goes straight out the window.
My friends have a dog that is, IIRC, a mix of Malinois, Dutch shepherd, German shepherd, and Lab. She would basically be the platonic ideal of a malinois except that she's all black with just a splash of white on her chest.
I have, as far as we know (she's a rescue, no paperwork,) a purebred Malinois who is basically spot-on perfect coloration and body shape, but she's got about 20lbs on what you'd normally expect a female Mal to weigh, so we kind of suspect she may be mixed.
(It's purely accidental that we both ended up with a Malinois, we're both the kind of people who just kind of accept whatever dog falls into our laps when we're ready for one, and we both lucked the fuck out that we got the only 2 lazy ones in existence)