Why are all film/tv Lassie's sables
I must admit to have not read the original story, but I am told that Lassie was a tri.
So why is she always depicted as a sable?
Good question. I have read the book, and you're right, Lassie in the novel was indeed a tri.
shareHere's the text from the first chapter of Eric Knight's Lassie Come Home:
Greenall Bridge was like other Yorkshire villages. Its men knew and understood and loved dogs, and there were many perfect ones that walked at men’s heels. But they all agreed that if a finer dog than Sam Carraclough’s tricolor collie had ever been bred in Greenall Bridge, then it must have been long before they were born.
But there was another reason why Lassie was so well known in the village. It was because, as the women said, “You can set your clock by her.” ...... Women glancing through the windows of their cottages, or shopkeepers standing in the doors of High Street, would see the proud black, white, and golden-sable dog go past on a steady trot, and would say:“Must be five to four–there goes Lassie!”
It does say that Lassie was a tricolour, but the second descriptor -- black,white and "golden sable" -- suggests a tri-factored, or shaded, sable dog, rather than a true tricolour. When the AKC did a study of some kind of breeders of collies and Shelties, it found that many dogs were wrongly registered as tricolours when they were in fact sables with black shading on their fur. Show breeders etc. would not make this mistake, but many ordinary owners and occasional breeders did.
A real "tricolour" has very little sable colour on the body -- two spots over the eyes, some sable on the muzzle and the legs, and usually that is all. So the second phrase suggests a dark sable, not a tri.
Regardless, probably the real reason all the "Lassies" have been golden sables since the first film is because that is what Rudd Weatherwax's "Pal" looked like, and there are more sables than tris available since it is a dominant gene.