All about Merle!

Hello Canine Lovers, this is a brief post about Merle coloured breeds. Majority of the information in this post has been sourced from Dog Genetics, click the link for a more in depth look at the Merle patterns and genetics, http://www.doggenetics.co.uk/merle.html

What is merle you may ask? Merle is a pattern in a dogs coat. Merle comes in different colours and patterns. The merle gene creates mottled patches of colour in a solid or piebald coat accompanied with blue or odd coloured eyes and can affect skin pigmentation.

Merle only occurs in a select few breeds , listed below:

· Australian Shepherd

· Catahoula Leopard Dog

· Norwegian Dunker

· Border Collie

· Old English Sheepdog

· Hungarian Mudi

· Cardigan Welsh Corgi

· Collie (Rough and Smooth)

· Shetland Sheepdog

· Dachshund (known as dapple)

· Beauceron

· Bergamasco

· Pyrenean Shepherd

· Great Dane

Recently it has been bred into other breeds of dog including the Chihuahua, Staffordshire Bull Terrier, American Cocker Spaniel, Pomeranian, French Bulldog and Poodles.

The Merle gene is known to cause a number of health problems, most common is deafness, blindness, sun sensitivity and skin cancer. Eye deformities can also be a problem. These health concerns are much more common in Double Merles.

Double Merle

Double Merles are predominantly white and may have merle patches on their head and sometimes the body. The noses are generally mostly or all pink, and the eyes are commonly blue.

It is advised that two merles should not be bred as this can increase the risk of double merle puppies.

This Dachshund is named Noddy. Unfortunately Noddy is both deaf and blind and shows the very serious consequences of irresponsible double merle breeding. Noddy is in a loving home but sadly a large number of double merles are euthanised as their disabilties can be difficult to manage.

Now some dogs may LOOK like they are merle when actually they just have heavy roaning. A way of telling the difference is that a roaned or ticked dog will have very uneven areas of grey with flecks of white showing through, also the eyes should have no blue as this can be a sign of merle as this pigment issue does not affect roaned dogs.

The dogs below are merle look alikes but non of them carry merle.

(English Cocker, Lagotto Romagnolo, German Pointer)

I hope this post has helped provided a basic understanding of merle colour patterns and the health concerns linked to them. click the link to find out more! http://www.doggenetics.co.uk/merle.html