Horse people (from whom dog people get a lot of their knowledge and vocabulary), know all about the color “pinto.” In dogs, it’s a term that describes placement more than color. Using the Akita as our example, a correctly marked “pinto” will have large evenly placed patches of color over her head, and over a third of her body. We rely on Akita owners to set us straight on this score, but we’ve read that while American Akitas can be pinto and have black masks,  the aforementioned is a disqualification in Japanese Akitas.

We invite the owners of Pinto marked Akitas to share their pictures with us. For now, we share an original Akita head study gouache painting by Robert J. May. This print is available for purchase here.