A: Hi. Thanks for the question. Yes, your breeder is correct. The term "solid liver" (as used in the GSP and DK breed) could be a bit confusing to the uninitiated. "Solid" liver is used as opposed to the terms "liver ticked", "liver roan", or "liver and white ticked" or "liver and white patched" or "liver and white ticked and patched". How's that for clear? LOL! The Germans describe the color you're talking about--liver with white on the belly and chest as: "braun mit brustfleck", which loosely translated means: "brown with breast ticking". Much more accurate a description than "solid" liver. If they do have a true solid liver with no white at all, the Germans refer to this color as "braun" (brown). Again, much more accurate than its English counterpart.
Liver with a small amount of white ticking on chest, belly, and/or toe tips is quite commonplace in the breed. There are very few true "solid" livers (meaning those without any white at all). When you fill out your registration papers that calls for the color and coat pattern of your pup, you will select the one closest to describing your dog--"liver".
This is taken from the US breed standard for GSP's: "COLOR: The dog's coat color may be solid liver or any combination of liver and white. . . such as liver and white ticked, liver patched and white ticked, or liver roan. . ."
The German (and other countries') standards for the breed, are much the same, but also allow solid black or any combination of black and white. In all of the standards, including the US standard, no tri-colored dogs, orange, lemon, or other colors are allowed. To make this somewhat easier to visualize, I am including some photos below. The individual photos will give you some idea of the varying colors allowed in the "solid liver" and "liver and white" ranges. The collage photo (from the cover of Georgina Byrne's Der Kurzhaar book), has a group of four dogs in the lower right hand corner. As you can see, both the "solid liver" and the "solid black" dogs have white ticking on their chests.
Bright white ticking means that the white hairs are very visible as white, not muddy looking or grey as they are when closely mixed with the colored hairs. There are just about as many variations on liver/white ticked and black/white ticked as you can imagine--ranging from almost no ticking whatsoever, to so much ticking that the overall impression when looking at the dog is another color altogether. "Roan" means a muddy-ish color where the dark and white colored hairs are closely mixed together, creating a greyish looking dog. Hope this explanation and the photos help!
solid black solid liver black/white ticked
liver roan black roan "solid" liver
liver/white ticked & patched liver/white ticked
allowed DK color varieties--lower right corner