Reference
American Bully Color Chart
Every coat in the breed, the genetics that produce it, how common it honestly is, and the ones that carry a real health risk, set out by me so you can sort fact from fashion before you buy.
The American Bully turns up in essentially every colour, and the breed is genuinely easy going about all of them. What the market is not easy going about is scarcity, which it tends to invent. This chart lays out what each coat actually is at the level of the genes, so you can tell a coat that is truly uncommon from one that is simply being sold hard.
Every coat, ranked by how often people search for it
| Coat | Rarity | Searches | Health risk from the coat | Available now |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Blue Merle | Uncommon | 720/mo | Double merle risk | 3 |
| Blue | Common | 590/mo | Dilution alopecia | None now |
| Merle | Uncommon | 480/mo | Double merle risk | 7 |
| Lilac Tri | Very rare | 390/mo | Dilution alopecia | None now |
| Chocolate Tri | Rare | 320/mo | None from the coat | None now |
| Tri Color | Uncommon | 320/mo | None from the coat | 2 |
| Exotic | A marketing term, not a rarity | 260/mo | Breathing, skin, joints | 1 |
| Lilac | Rare | 170/mo | Dilution alopecia | 3 |
| Lilac Merle | Very rare | 170/mo | Double merle risk | 1 |
| Black | Common | 170/mo | None from the coat | None now |
| Fawn | Common | 170/mo | None from the coat | 2 |
| Brindle | Uncommon | 170/mo | None from the coat | None now |
| Blue Tri | Uncommon | 140/mo | Dilution alopecia | 1 |
| Chocolate | Uncommon | 110/mo | None from the coat | None now |
| Champagne | Rare | 110/mo | Dilution alopecia | None now |
| Chocolate Merle | Rare | 110/mo | Double merle risk | 2 |
| Blue Fawn | Uncommon | 90/mo | Dilution alopecia | None now |
| White and Piebald | Uncommon | 90/mo | Deafness risk | 1 |
The rarity column is honest, not promotional. Most listings tag every coat as rare. A few of these genuinely are, several are ordinary, and the coats that fetch the most are not always the ones that are hardest to produce.
Three risks worth understanding
Double merle
The serious one. A dog with a single merle parent is an ordinary, healthy dog. A dog bred from two merle parents is at high risk of deafness, blindness or both, and nothing about the puppy’s appearance will tell you which you are looking at. Merle draws the biggest money in the breed, and that is precisely what tempts people to breed merle to merle. Ask me about both parents of any merle puppy here and I’ll tell you plainly.
Colour dilution alopecia
The same gene that turns a black dog blue and a red dog champagne carries an association with brittle, thinning hair in the diluted areas, sometimes alongside recurring skin infections. It tends to surface between six months and three years, it is permanent once it shows, and it is confined to the diluted coats: blue, lilac, champagne and blue fawn.
Deafness with heavy white
Where white runs extensively across the head and ears, the rate of congenital deafness climbs, because the pigment cells and the inner ear develop together. A BAER test is how you find out for certain. A dog deaf in one ear lives a completely normal life, but it is better to know going in.
Where colour sits in how I breed
Near the bottom, honestly. Temperament comes first, then structure, and the coat is the last thing I look at. I don’t believe a colour tells you anything about the dog that is going to share your house for the next twelve years.
That is not a moral stance, it is just what the evidence says. Coat colour has no bearing on temperament, on health at birth, on structure, or on how long a dog lives. The fashion keeps turning over: brindle was wanted, then it wasn’t, tri colour was unremarkable, then suddenly it was the thing. The dogs never changed. Pick the one whose nature and build suit you, and the colour will have stopped mattering within a few weeks of it coming home.
Looking for a particular coat?
Tell me which one and I’ll say honestly whether I’ve it, whether it’s coming, or whether you’d be better buying elsewhere.