Can any one tell me what causes blue eyes in basset hounds. What are the genetics involved

I don't know which gene would be involved but it is a fault as indeed it is in most dogs - blue is not a colour general acceptable in the canine, domestic or wild. Basset should have a brown eye medium to dark and if it has blue it probable has an out cross in its background or the line is carrying a major fault and dogs with blue eyes should not be bred from nor should their siblings.

i know it is a major fault, just trying to research what makes it occur

Just to say that it's not a fault in siberian huskies and in fact this breed has a dominant gene for blue eyes.  Blue eyes are also acceptable in border collies in the UK at least - not in show dogs in Germany though.  Most pups start off with blue eyes and then the colour comes in - like humans in most (not sibes) breeds blue is a lack of colour rather than a colour.  I don't know about other breeds.

Dapple pattern dachshunds are allowed to have blue eyes, they always look spooky to me.

Penny, I did say in most dog it is a fault and it is not a natural canine colour, it does happen but it is often linked to other health problems or rather genes that can cause them. Yes, Siberians are an exception but then they often have eyes of different colours (one brown and one blue) this must be some sort of mutation as it is not the norm in any animal and yes, blue or very pale eye does seem to be connected to merle and some types of white coat but that is connected to albino which in its self is caused by a problem gene.

don't take it personally Jackie!  in fact border collies which are solid colour also have blue eyes, both collies and huskys can have one blue and one other colour.  Interestingly... going back to merle it is less likely for a merle with tan to have blue eyes than one without tan.... I'm waiting to see if Merc changes his eye colour from grey to brown (he's blue & white).  A pup in his litter (black and white) had one blue eye but all other eyes were brown when I saw them at 7 weeks.  However my blue tri merle's eyes went from blue to a very fetching amber colour at about 6 months.  As far as I am aware blue eyes in collies and huskies are NOT related to any health problem.  Merle is only a potential issue if two merle genes are put together - it's not a true colour gene, the dappling is merely the effect of the merle gene.

don't take it personally!

No I don't, I know there are exceptions but the fact remains it is some sort of mutation although to get back to the original question I do not know which genes are involved and suspect it may be different in different breeds. There is no doubt that the gene causing the albino also causes deafness and blue, pale amber eyes. There are other genes that give blue eyes that are inked to other things such as coat colour and I suspect there is no one answer to this but it should in most cases be avoided.

Quite possibly - in huskies though it's a separate eye colour gene for blue, which is totally unusual as it's a dominant gene :-)  In collies it's interesting.  That's why I posted, because it's interesting that there are exceptions and there are likely to be more which I don't currently know about, but I'd like to, and it adds to the discussion and hopefully I'll learn something :-)

> However my blue tri merle's eyes went from blue to a very fetching amber colour at about 6 months.

My red/white BC has pale amber eyes.  I know people that dislike it, but I find it very soft and appealing - he has only to look at me to make me happy! 

A friends husky has one brown eye and the other eye is half and half like a sunset :)

OES are also allowed to have one or two wall (blue) eyes.

One reason for the blue eyes in Bassets may be down to the white spotting pattern they have.

From reading this: http://homepage.usask.ca/~schmutz/Bassets.html
it seems that Bassets have two different genes causing white markings - Irish Spotting (for low-level white) and Piebald for dogs with more white.

It is widely known in other species that white spotting patterns can alter the eye colour. The white turns off the pigment cells in the white areas, so if a white patch falls across an eye, it would also affect the eye colour, reducing it to blue. The dog doesn't need to actually have a white patch near the eye for this to happen.

This is also what happens when dogs with white markings are deaf - a lack of pigment in the inner ear means the hearing mechanism fails to develop properly. Not all white spotting patterns cause this, though... it is crucially timed to the migration of pigment cells from the neural crest during development in the embryo.

Border collies - non-merle- can also have blue eyes and this is almost certainly due to a similar effect, although I don't think it has yet been established what gene is responsible for white markings in BCs. I would not be surprised if it turns out to be piebald. BCs don't need a great deal of white to have blue eye/s, the dam of my Belgian/BC cross was almost all black with just a few trimmings of white on chest, belly, feet and nose yet she had one blue eye.

The feeling is that the Blue eyes in Huskies is another gene affecting eye colour, and not related to blue eyes in other breeds.

weimaraners sometimes keep their puppy blue eyes too