But we write this one because every so often, someone writes to us absolutely certain that their pale Labrador and their relative’s fox-red Labrador cannot possibly be the same color, and that one of them must be secretly part something else.

We hate to ruin the intrigue, but the American Kennel Club settled this ages ago, in writing, using the word “color” three separate times as if daring anyone to argue. The official standard states plainly that “Yellows may range in color from fox-red to light cream, with variations in shading on the ears, back, and underparts of the dog.”

One color. An entire tonal spectrum of one color.

What might explain this is that yellow, unlike black or chocolate, is not what the Labrador Retriever Club’s Illustrated Standard calls a “whole” color — meaning one uniform shade with no lighter or darker patches: Illustrated Standard, PSLRA.

Black Labs are black all over. Chocolate Labs are chocolate all over. Yellow Labs, by design, are allowed to look like they got dressed in low lighting.

Blame the MC1R gene. As the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine explains, a Labrador needs two copies of the recessive “e” version of this gene to turn yellow at all; that variant blocks black or chocolate pigment from reaching the hair, though it stays put in the skin, nose, and eye rims, which is why a proper yellow Lab still has that handsome black trim (UC Davis coat color genetics). UC Davis’s Veterinary Genetics Laboratory adds that this “ee” genotype produces “shades of cream, yellow, and/or red” rather than one fixed tone (UC Davis VGL, MC1R testing), and geneticist Dr. Sheila Schmutz, Professor Emerita at the University of Saskatchewan, has published peer-reviewed research specifically on how cream coloring arises from this same locus interacting with modifying genes (Schmutz & Berryere, Journal of Heredity).

So when a cream Lab fades to nearly invisible except for a faint gold whisper on the ears, it hasn’t lost its color card. It’s still running the identical “ee” genotype as its blazing fox-red cousin, just turned down to a simmer. Yellow Lab owners don’t always agree on what shade their own dogs are, but they are likely both right. The only one who has never once questioned the matter is the dog.