I have 2 puppies that are half GSD and half Shar-pei. What are the odds of the ears standing?

im pretty sure its 1 to 2 or 50% chance, but it depends on how the DNA arranged its self so it might be 1 to 4 or 25%
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i got 2 gsd mixes
one is a staffie mix gsd, the other is a gsd mix staffie/pittbull
on both of them, there ears stand up , if they got gsd marking and the gsd is the dominate gene , what it normally is ,they will stand up . i cannot remember but i think my lil ones ears did not stand up till about 4 months old maybe older than that ,may have been as much as 6 months ,
but i do remember training the ears up on my lil one . ie stroking the ears into the upright position, as i was a lil concerned that they wound not stand up

edit . les the lofty , you may be right you may be wrong , i seen many a gsd mix , very common in the uk , i dont know if you aware of this , i seen many a ROTTIE x gsd that also has stand up ears ,a rottie as you know a molloser(mastiff type) when you got something that got massive ears like a basset of course the ears will go done they just too large and heavy to stand up ,
i seen many a shar pei x staffie were the ears down but i have also see pure staffie with ears up , like you say about some terriers ears up ,
but when you compare a bassets ears to a shar pei , there no comparason , much small more like a rottie maybe even smaller in relation to the dog ,
but like i do get you point , i not going to i dis-believs you
all i am doing is comparing the size of a shar-pei ears in comparasion to a staffie or rottie in relation to the size of the dog ,
and you right i dont know that much about genetics, i just know what i have seen
MANY more cross breeds in the uk than reconised pedigree dogs now , mostly pit/staffs , or pit something ,lurchers , even border collie cross gsd have stand up ears (strange shape like pears but still up)
But i did like what you put les , well said

shawn , please can you email me a pic , this is a x breed i want ot see , and please keep me informed on if they stand up by age of 8 months ?
is it the larger shar-pei or the smaller type (less wrinkles )
we have two differerent types in the uk !!
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Look at 100 Shar Peis.
Count how many of them have erect ears.
That is the percentage chance you have of a Shar Pei cross's ears coming up.
I believe it is 0%.

The GSD-cross pups I'm aware of, such as the 3 generation experiment conducted before 1941 by Stockard, to check whether achondroplastic legs or normal legs were dominant, resulted in all flop-ears.
The P1 generation was a GSD bit.ch and a Basset dog.
The F1 generation all had achondroplastic legs and total-flop ears.
The F2 generation (produced by mating a pair of the F1 generation) produced 7 pups almost perfectly demonstrated the 1 : 2 : 1 and 3 : 1 ratios calculated by Gregor Mendel.
• 5 of them were achondroplastic, 2 of them had normal legs.
• 4 of them had ears that stood almost horizontally for a way before drooping, 3 of them had total-flop ears.

I don't believe that ear carriage is a simple dominant vs recessive trait. I believe it is a very complex polygenic one, requiring a host of "right" alleles for erection to occur. As neither Bassets nor Shar Peis demonstrate having any of the "right" alleles, I cannot expect 50% of the GSD's "right" alleles (50% being the maximum either parent can pass to its progeny) being enough to add to the Basset's or Shar Pei's close-to-0% of the "right" alleles and reach a total that will produce erection.

Crossing to a terrier is a different story, depending on the particular breed. Many terrier breeds DO have erect ears, proving that they have a reliably high percentage of the "right" alleles. Others have tipped ears, proving that they have ALMOST enough of the "right" alleles.

BTW - if you aren't familiar with the word "allele", it simply means "an alternative version of that gene, one that works slightly differently to each other allele in that gene series".
If that makes your eyeballs ache, think of a car's wheels - there are many alternative treads available for a particular wheel: some that give grip in snow or ice, some that give grip on soft ground, some that have minimum friction in a straight line but give great grip when cornering on a hard dry surface, some that pump rain-water out to give a better grip on a wet road - they are all part of the same "car tyre series" and all do roughly the same thing (give a vehicle a grip on the surface), but they do it in different ways.

[mutant mutts]:
You have FAR too simple an idea of genetics. You haven't realised that the genes for Agouti patterns, and the several genes for the colours in those patterns, and the genes for coat length, and the several genes for ear carriage, are each inherited SEPARATELY. Have you understood the process of meiosis yet?
There is no "gene for being a GSD", the characteristics are a right mix of dominant alleles and intermediate alleles and recessive alleles. And regardless of which breed it came from, a dominant allele will switch off any intermediate or recessive allele, and an intermediate allele will switch off any allele lower in the order of dominance than it is.
And every allele in the GSD gene pool (except the "Panda"-allele that was a brand new mutation in about 1999) is available in several other breeds' gene pools - just not in the same COMBINATIONS as found in GSDs.
Les P, owner of GSD_Friendly: http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/GSD_Friendly
"In GSDs" as of 1967
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