Double Merle Collie breeders have no problem with their dogs being blind, and they have no problem pulling the wool over your eyes either. My exposé of Wyndlair Avalanche has gone viral and now the breeders who support this practice are closing ranks and covering their tracks.
Funny, they didn’t have any problem advertising and lauding these dogs before when I explained just how bad double merle breeding really is. I guess they took your silence as tacit approval of their breeding ethics. Perhaps they mistook those ribbons for universal acclaim.
But now it appears as though they are embarrassed! Why else would they start taking down their websites that used to advertise these dogs?
Meet Alfenloch A Beautiful Starlet, affectionately known as Nadia: as in she can’t see nadia because she’s totally blind. If you can name any albino, blind, and deaf starlets, you’ll win a prize. I can’t think of one who even has two of the three.
Watch where you are going, dear. Oh wait, you can't watch anything, you're blind and probably deaf too. Don't worry, we'll put a Helen Keller quote on your advertising page.
Nadia used to have her own webpage where she was advertised for her ability to produce entire litters of merle puppies. It was located here: http://www.alfenlochcollies.com/nadia.html, but now it’s been removed. Good thing google keeps a cache!
You can take down the webpage, you can't unbreed the dogs.
Sired by AM.CAN.CH.TALIESIN ALFENLOCH ANTARCTIC (CCA AOM) ex Wyndlair A Beautiful Sunrise
Bred/Owned by Alfenloch ColliesAlfenloch A Beautiful Starlet …. this elegant double merle girl has a long, lean, light headpiece with exquisite head detail, a huge coat and long, arched neck.
She is very reminiscent of her exceptional grandsire, Wyndlair Avalanche.
Nadia is very special to us, and our plans for her include breeding her to the exceptional tricolor, Countryview The Magic Marker in 2011, for an entire litter of blue merles!
It’s really amazing why anyone would want to remove that webpage. Is there anything factually inaccurate on it? Did Nadia succumb to her genetic disease and the breeder wants to make sure no eager puppy buyers might get confused on where they can get their next blue merle collie from? Or do you think that they are unwilling to take the heat regarding the morality of what they are doing?
Many "starlets" have a good side. You'll never see the right side of Nadia's face where her coloration doesn't obscure the extent of atrophy and disease in her eyes.
Poor Nadia doesn’t appear to even have eyes, and it’s clear that her breeder cares more about taping up her ears to make a nice picture than if she can actually hear anything out of them. I wonder if Diane Fitzpatrick, her breeder, even realizes that this is a living creature and not some inanimate object like a painting, a cake or a dress. This is a living organism that never needed to exist with the dysfunctions it has to accomplish any goals. No one needs to create double merles to get merle puppies.
What is certain is that Nadia’s webpage was not taken down because Diane Fitzpatrick had a change of heart about Merle x Merle breeding. Just this Saturday, Diane announced on the Alfenloch Collies facebook page that her Blue Merle bitch Alfenloch Silver Carrera had a litter of “5 flashy babies” with Taliesin Alfenloch Antarctic, another blue merle with Collie Eye Anomaly. He won the Award of Merit at the 2010 Collie Club of America National Specialty and the Best of Breed/Best In Specialty at the 2010 Collie Club of Canada National Specialty. These are not unknown dogs by some rogue breeders. Antarctic has sired 3 different litters this year at Alfenloch collies.
I wonder if any of the double merle puppies survived birth.
Antarctic is Wyndlair Avalanche’s son. Since Collie Eye Anomaly is a simple recessive disease and Antarcitc has it, this means that Wyndlair Avalanche is at least a carrier of CEA if not affected himself (who would know, he might not even have eyes that you could look through to diagnose it), it also guarantees that Nadia is at minimum a carrier of CEA as well. So here we have the son of a blind double merle producing more double merles himself and winning top honors in two different countries while doing so.
This is the actual website advertisement of the Merle x Merle litter that was born on June 16th, 2011.
Any notion that these dogs are “oops, we didn’t know better” or “we didn’t know both parents were merle” should be laid to rest now. They’re doing this on purpose knowing full well what can happen.
update: In response to appearing in my Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy? post, one of the breeders in question who advertised her use of Wyndlair Avalanche as a stud with “Wyndlair Avalanche (“Aiden”) x Mainstay Back of the Moon (“Stella”) … An all blue merle litter is due mid-March!,” has removed the original page from their website. Here is a screen cap of the entire page before it was removed.
Apparently a little scrutiny was enough for the breeder of this litter to become embarrassed and take the page down to hide her tracks.
She has yet to remove the pedigree of the litter, however. It’s rather sad because this breeder did not breed the double merle, and she used Avalanche with a non-merle bitch. But the allure of an all merle litter was the one and only selling point.
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I would be willing to bet that litter included at least one, probably several, double merles who were put down at birth. I have heard from people inquiring about my dogs that they know of breeders who regularly breed merle to merle and kill all the double merle puppies at birth. I know these practices were common in the old days, but they are inexcusable in modern society, particularly when the only goal is to win in the show ring…what a waste!
Not their only goal – many people are prepared to pay more for a merle pup, and either don’t know or don’t care about the health consequences associated with double merle breeding! Plus, if these breeders weren’t so greedy they could breed a merle to a non-merle and not run any risk of producing double merle pups, they just would have fewer merle pups each litter, therefore make less money!! Supply and demand rules with some people, it is up to breed clubs and the rest of the breeder community (including vets and the puppy buying public) to stop these unscrupulous practices by the greedy, unethical minority!
That’s not exactly true regarding breeding Merle to Merle, as breeding Non-merle to Merle produces the same number of single-merle puppies as breeding Merle to Merle. 50% of ovums. The difference is that Merle x Merle produces 25% double merles, many of which don’t survive to birth and ate just lost.
The only way to produce more merles per litter is Double Merle x non-merle which produces 100% merles. So in that regard you are correct. But one has to be really callous to produce and then use a double Merle stud.
That is not how genetics work.
You might ‘like’ this website. http://www.kennelcity.com/cdgrdub.html
The breeder is explaining how in her considerable experience the head colour of a double merle does not affect whether it is deaf or not.
This is what shocked me: “My records of double merle Shelties include nearly 80 individuals, and span more than thirty years” – from what else she says I think she means she’s been deliberately breeding merlexmerle shelties for that long.
Another quote: “However, it is very sad for me to hear these words, “I was so hoping for a good double merle from this litter, and I got one that looked lovely. However, he had white all around his eyes and had white ears, so I had him put down at birth, because he would have been deaf and blind.” ” So… these breeders aren’t just breeding to produce more merles and the double merles are a by-product, they’re breeding to deliberately produce double merles because they’re pretty, and just hoping that the puppies won’t be blind and deaf.
What bother me most about that Sheltie sight is that she makes herself look like an iconoclast– like she’s some kind of pioneer, who is sticking it to the “experts.”
Very creationistish.
Retrieverman recently posted..Three generations of golden bitches
That’s my website. I am not breeding double merles. I am a biologist with 40 years of color breeding data, and thought it useful for people to know that double merles with white ears are not necessarily deaf. Idiot brains, just because I have collected data on 80 double merles, doesn’t mean they were bred or owned by me. They aren’t. Get it together, people, and read what is actually written!
The white ear thing is correct.
But breeding double merle is a very stupid thing to promote and defend, regardless of what you have.
In the UK, you can’t register double merles anymore for a reason.
So the research is a moot point.
The theme of your site is to defend breeding double merles.
Retrieverman recently posted..Identify this fox
Then how come there is no peer-reviewed paper regarding merle-factor with your name on it?
http://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=merle+dana+que&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=on
Dave recently posted..Research Request: History of the Black Norwegians
You are the idiot sir why would you promote breeding double merles or merle to merl breedings if you know so much???? I sincerrly doubt your credentals.
NO ONE(who knows what they are talking about) has stated white ears ALWAYS means the dog will be deaf BUT it has been been found to be higher odds again for ears with no color to be deaf. Here’s an extract from the website linked below about deafnes in cattle dogs due to lack of colour.
http://kombinalong.com/home/?page_id=180
Inherited congenital sensorineural deafness is usually, but not always associated with pigmentation genes responsible for white in the coat, but, as the Dalmatian is influential in the overall makeup of the Australian Cattle Dog, the breed is unfortunately plagued with this problem.
Why come on here calling names & whinging if you have so much knowledge how about you share some of your results gained from all the data you have collected instead????
Creating dogs with functioning eyes and ears doesn’t rate as ‘improving the breed’, apparently.
I can tell you that ear taping is so pervasive that it’s leaking over into the Border Collies. So much so that I was under the impression that I _should_ be doing it with my dogs. I even bought some imported special Japanese tape for the purpose and did it on Gemma for a week.
I was so disgusted that my beautiful puppy looked like a medical patient in all my photos and the amount of redness and irritation it caused in her ear that I used the solvent to remove the one that was still stuck and never thought of manipulating my dog’s looks again.
All the sites that the BC breeders linked to were for Shelties and Collies.
http://home.comcast.net/~triumphshelties/tape/ear_tape.htm
Border Collies don’t really have the ear leather or the ear shape or placement on the head to have “ornamental” ears. But that doesn’t stop breeders from trying. Just check out the BCs in this photo. I think (but don’t know for sure) that such strange ears are the result of “training” ears as a puppy with tape.
Christopher recently posted..Dog Breeds are Closed Populations
Ok I think you need to get some of your facts correct before you go all out on your crusade. First of all in a merle to merle breeding not all the dogs will be born double dilute. Both dogs you have pictured while are the result of a merle to merle are NOT double dilute. They have color on them. And they have color on their eyes and ears which mean they can both see and hear!!!!!! Secondly if they are used for breeding which they are because they produce a clearer color to their offspring, do not pass off the inability to see/hear if they were blind/deaf. It is a self limiting mutilation and not passed on genetically. Now onto the color headed whites which someone touched upon in their comments. They are not RARE, they are not blind nor deaf, they are the result of breeding a white factored dog to a white factored dog. There is no harm in breeding together white factored dogs. It does not beget any defects or the risk of blindness or deafness. Also as far as having your dogs CERF’d all mine are done and I personally have the records here I just choose to not have them sent into the OFA site.
So, I suggest before writing your “articles” you do some research and talk to people who actually have knowledge of what you are writing about rather than flying off the handle and jumping to inaccurate conclusions!
And before the hate comments come I do not breed merles, I only have sables, I actually took the time to educate myself on other colors and the genetics of them!
Annie, you have poor reading comprehension.
(1) I’ve written rather extensively and accurately about the genetic outcomes of Merle x Merle matings.
– http://www.border-wars.com/2011/03/lethal-semi-dominant-merle.html
– http://www.border-wars.com/2011/03/the-unfortunate-case-of-the-wild-australian-shepherd.html
(2) I never said anywhere that all the dogs from a Merle x Merle would be double merle. Statistically over many litters we expect 25% of the zygotes to be double merle. We probably see less than this reaching live birth as it is sometimes lethal prenatally.
(3) I did not say that the two dogs pictured were double merles! I only said that they were capable of producing double merles, and they are. Avalanche (the previous post) and Nadia, are most certainly double merles.
(4) In a study that is often quoted by people who do these Merle x Merle to get double merle dogs, the evidence suggests that color “on the ears” and eyes is not particularly conclusive in determining actual hearing loss and vision levels.
(5) I made no such claim that their blindness and deafness was passed along. But even a single copy of the merle gene can cause hearing and vision loss. And that’s not really the point of this series, the point of the series is the creation of these dogs who are knowingly defective for the only marginal benefit of producing all merle puppies instead of 50% merle puppies. Since the single merle gene is much less likely to cause defect, I am questioning the lazy breeding methods and shortcut to get more merle puppies when the breeders need not ever do this to get Merle puppies.
The ethics of merle, even in a single copy, is another issue. I don’t think it wise to cloud this discussion. The rate of disease of double merles is so high and this practice is so unnecessary.
So Annie, please actually read my articles instead of skimming them, you missed the major points and made up points all your own that were never said.
Notice how it’s ‘okay’ because the deaf and blindness of the MxM dogs ‘won’t be passed on’! Why is the creation of these blind/deaf dogs, by themselves, okay? It’s okay to produce deaf/blind dogs like these because *their* offspring won’t be? How does that make any moral sense?
Ah, the moral paradox of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas”.
We have to ask ourselves, is it okay to condemn a dog or a bitch to a life of deafblindness in order to procure all-merle litters just so our clienteles will be happy. Is the happiness of four to six clients per litter over a span of ten years worthwhile? One dog who doesn’t know what a normal life is in order to make hundreds of people screech in joys they got the rare, elusive blue dogs.
This sort of thing reeks of faddism. The practice reminds me of how Japanese pet owners acquire their puppies.
Dave recently posted..Dogs, Guns and Porn
As the owner of a deaf double merle Aussie puppy, I really appreciate what you all are trying to get across here. While my puppy is full of life, and lives a absolute normal life, this was all completely preventable, had there been educated breeding. Sweetest dog I’ve ever owned, and so so so so smart. But, hard having to think that this could have been prevented.
Actually she is not. It is you that is handpicking data and completely disregarding genetics. Next thing you’ll do is say halequins and Maltese Merle Collies are DBL dilutes. Idiot. I hope I find out who you are. We do a good enough job of educating our buyers. WITHOUT YOUR IGNORANCE.
“They have color on them. And they have color on their eyes and ears which mean they can both see and hear!!!!!!”
Absolutely not true, my dear. You are the one who needs to check her facts. You cannot tell whether the dog can hear just by looking at whether the ears are colored, you must look down inside the ear:
http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/genetics.htm
“The deafness, which usually develops in the first few weeks after birth while the ear canal is still closed, usually results from the degeneration of part of the blood supply to the cochlea (the stria vascularis). The nerve cells of the cochlea subsequently die and permanent deafness results. The cause of the vascular degeneration is not known, but appears to be associated with the absence of pigment producing cells (melanocytes) in the blood vessels. All of the function of these cells are not known, but one role is to maintain high potassium concentrations in the fluid (endolymph) surrounding the hair cells of the cochlea; these pigment cells are critical for survival of the stria.”
Likewise for the eyes, especially since pigment in the skin and hair around the eye has nothing to do with whether the dog can see or not. Avalanche is blind and he has pigment around one eye. Your own research is based on what? Hearsay? Nadia’s own web page admits she is a double merle. So does Avalanche’s page. Perhaps your reading comprehension is simply poor.
If I were to breed two dogs together that carried a recessive gene that would result in each puppy having a 25% chance of being born blind, I would be vilified as an irresponsible breeder. After all, there are plenty of good dogs out there that aren’t carriers.
Why is producing these dogs via merle x merle breedings different?
Jess recently posted..Fun Stuff at Afghan Hound Times
Kinda hard to CERF a dog with no eyes…
Retrieverman recently posted..A sagacious young retriever
Ahh yes attack me..not that I am surprised since I brought several facts to light, that no one wanted to hear! I love how you keep insisting that they have no eyes when infact they do, and you can see it very clearly in the photos posted. Also love how you keep saying that breeders are doing this to produce all merle litters when once again you contradicted yourself if you look at the photo of the litter announcement and there was 1 blue merle male, 1 female blue and 3 tri’s born…hmmm guess that just throws out that theory than or am I reading the photo wrong?!
Love this quote as well
““The deafness, which usually develops in the first few weeks after birth while the ear canal is still closed, usually results from the degeneration of part of the blood supply to the cochlea (the stria vascularis). The nerve cells of the cochlea subsequently die and permanent deafness results. The cause of the vascular degeneration is not known, but appears to be associated with the absence of pigment producing cells (melanocytes) in the blood vessels. All of the function of these cells are not known, but one role is to maintain high potassium concentrations in the fluid (endolymph) surrounding the hair cells of the cochlea; these pigment cells are critical for survival of the stria.”
That is what I stated, that since they have pigment (ie color) that they are most likely seeing and hearing..
I have seen double dilutes that even with not an ounce of pigment on their whole body and they can still make out shapes and lights….ohhhhh and they have eyes too..the entire litter had eyes….even if the dog is blind it still has eyes, they have a cloudy appearance, so stop with the shock and awe you are going for where they are born without eyes and stop referring to hearsay!!!
There are double merles with no eyes.
Retrieverman recently posted..Chat room
I hate to do this, but I think we need to make intentionally breeding two merles together an offense to animal cruelty statutes.
I hate to come up with a law, but it’s obvious these collie people are too irresponsible and too full of sh*t to listen.
So maybe we’re gonna need a law.
Retrieverman recently posted..Chat room
Let’s CERF this dog:
http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h279/robin78_2006/P1010247.jpg
Retrieverman recently posted..Chat room
The absence of is not definitive proof. There are tons of evidences breeding for double merles can and will end in disaster. With such a long history and well-known facts about such a dangerous breeding. Sorry, documented facts are weighted heavily against personal anecdotes.
In the years I spent breeding and associating myself with other breeders, usually the old school don’t advertise stillborns and defective offspring because either: it’s irrelevant to the placement in homes, or they are used to accepting that fact. Usually the only time you see such litters or clutches mentioned is when they are trying to educate younger breeders. So just because one doesn’t mention it, it does not make it so.
The fact there are phantom homozygous merles is scary. This means any puppy has the potential to be a ticking timebomb from a merle to merle crossing.
Dave recently posted..Dogs, Guns and Porn
ohh yea thats right..make more pointless laws..thats just what the dog world needs…insert scarcism…
The so called “Phantom Homozygous merles” is also called cryptic merles. There are several tell tale signs that any experienced breeder can tell if it is cryptic.
As far as the eye picture I can show you sables or any dog for that fact looking the same way. Caused by an infection before the eyes opened and they lost their eyes.
Ive said it before and I’ll say it again, I dont breed merles, I have no desire to. BUT I do believe we need to stop attacking other breeders when they are not affecting you, and they are taking care of their dogs and stop giving those freaking AR nut jobs more ammo!
That’s why I said “intentional.”
If you think that infection caused the eyes to look like that, you are an idiot.
Retrieverman recently posted..A sagacious young retriever
“The so called “Phantom Homozygous merles” is also called cryptic merles.”
No. You have cryptic merle, and cryptic double merle. “Heterozygous merle” are just called “merle,” for simplicity sakes. The fact double merles can appear to be regular merles is in itself scary. Do you not realize the potential backlash of selling a phantom double merle to a pet owner?
There are several tell tale signs that any experienced breeder can tell if it is cryptic. .”
If that is the case, there wouldn’t be so many accidental litters containing double merles. There is a reason why with certain breeds, like Cardigan Corgis, there is a Code of Ethics stating sables can only be bred to tricolour. Even cryptic merle can hide in the brindle coat. If more breed clubs adopt policy, then there wouldn’t be so many accidental cryptic breedings.
“BUT I do believe we need to stop attacking other breeders when they are not affecting you, and they are taking care of their dogs and stop giving those freaking AR nut jobs more ammo!”
No one is handing them ammo. The breeders practically loaded the guns themselves and handed it to the pet owners who are ignorant. The pet owners are the one who end up with these puppies with these problems. If we don’t police ourselves, the politicians will take care of the issue for us.
Dave recently posted..Dogs, Guns and Porn
And how are suppose to police ourselves if we keep it all hush-hush? An open discussion visible to everyone’s eyes is far much better than letting breeders who remain mum letting defective puppies fall into the hands of pet owners.
Dave recently posted..Dogs, Guns and Porn
Annie,
Doing this to dogs is cruel. Breeders doing this on purpose is what is creating ammunition for the AR lobby to legislate all of us. You are asking me to stay silent lest the AR lobby find out?
That’s like asking a wife to stay silent about her husband beating her just so that the crime statistics in your neighborhood don’t skyrocket and the police start hanging around more.
These breeders actually ARE affecting me and all of us because they will bring down the law on all of us. We all suffer when a supposedly well respected sport exposes itself to hatred, criticism, and eventually legislation that documents the abuses like this.
The law won’t single out Merle x Merle collies, it won’t single out a breed, or even an organization like the AKC. It will be sweeping and as inclusive as they can make it. I don’t think I’ll get an exception from whatever stupid law they pass just because I’ve never done this to a dog and never will.
Plus, beyond the practical, this is simply disgusting and immoral.
Christopher recently posted..Double Merle Breeders Don’t Want You to See This
“infection” … lmao. Yeah, and perhaps the eye fairy came in the middle of the night and plucked those suckers out.
If Nadia has eyes, I want to see an up close photo of both of them. And I’d like to see her catch a frisbee at a distance. This is 2011, we have youtube. Our phones have digital cameras. Let’s make that happen.
Christopher recently posted..Wyoming Bound
Annie, You just don’t get the point! When two merles are bred, SOME of the poor puppies CAN be DEAF, BLIND, or BOTH! This fact you cannot deny. ANYONE who intentionally breeds merle dogs together, ANY BREED, is just a STUPID & HEARTLESS asshole! I have 2 Deaf, double-merle Aussies and love them to death – which is what they were headed for when I rescued them from shelters who were going to KILL them because of their disablities! Why take the chance and either have to KILL puppies that don’t meet your criteria or find loving homes for the ones that can’t see and/or hear. You are an irresponsible and ignorant woman who needs to shut her PIE-HOLE!
actually you bring the dog to the vet and they “pluck” out the infected eyes. No fairies involved…
The majority of DM breeding have been the results of these BYB hicks who just shove their dogs together and have absolutely no clue and the majority of them are not AKC registered dogs.
Now the AKC could take the stand like the UK kennel Club and just outright ban the registering of merle/merle breeding.
And lastly there is a right way of going about “policing” and educating people. This is NOT the method!
Well I can say that Avalanche’s breeder hardly fits your definition of a “backyard breeding hick.”
Retrieverman recently posted..Chat room
Oh, geez, Swedish and Finnish breeders have been doing these open forum discussions for years and their animal rights laws are nowhere near as strict as central Europe.
Dave recently posted..Dogs, Guns and Porn
Gosh Annie, where are you getting your statistics? You’re trying to blame this on some nameless “backyard” breeder. But what I’ve posted evidence of is the TOP AKC show breeders in the USA and Canada are doing this.
These people are lauded as the best of the best. They just produced a Merle x Merle litter this last weekend.
Are they backyard breeders? Is the #1 Rough Collie in the nation the son of a backyard bred dog?
Christopher recently posted..Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy?
hmmm must be the same place you got your “stastics” that merle x merle only produces merles. Just look at your posting! And these horrible breeders that you are bashing are caring for their DM. Not dumping them off in the rescues when they figure out they have a disabled dog.
“And these horrible breeders that you are bashing are caring for their DM.”
So you admit they produce double-merles then? Why would the top show breeders in the American Kennel Club would be half-brained enough to do a merle-to-merle crossing deliberately? Seriously?
At least other breed clubs have Code of Ethics regarding the merle alleles. The collie folks don’t seem to have a Code of Ethics, regarding the dangers of semi-dominant traits, to abide by.
Dave recently posted..Dogs, Guns and Porn
Annie, please quote me saying that Merle x Merle only produces merles. Where did I say that?
A Double Merle x anything only produces merles.
Find my quote. Show me. And when you can’t, realize that you have poor reading comprehension.
Oh for the love of god. I NEVER (perhaps it is you who have a reading comprehension problem) said that there is no such thing as Double Merles…WHAT I said was the one pictured if not a dilute Merle because it has pigment! Sheesh. What I said was if you are going to go bashing certain people have your facts right first (like not having eyes when in fact it does). Although jumping the gun and making your own spin on it doesnt surprise me given the article and the comments here. I already stated the reasoning behind why Merle x Merle breedings are done, but than again you didnt bother to read that.
Are you having an aneurysm right now? You are speaking nonsense.
Nadia is a double merle. Both her parents are merle. I don’t know what you’re talking about her not being a “dilute” because she has pigment. Double Merles are not albinos dear.
The other two dogs pictured are both merles. They have been bred together. Such a breeding can produce double merles. That’s the point I’m making. They weren’t bred by accident, they were bred on purpose.
You have yet to find a single fact that I have gotten wrong. Even regarding the status of the eyes in Nadia. Not only has the breeder prevented any photos of the left side of the dog’s face being posted on her website or facebook, there is nothing close enough to determine what, if anything, is in her eye sockets.
There’s no retina flash, no discernible color. I don’t see it. We should have better pictures of her eyes, being opened with some fingers and taken up close. We should also see some evidence of her doing something that only a dog with vision can do. Like I said, catching a frisbee at a distance.
But do keep trying, you’re doing a marvelous job of advertising the expertise and compassion of your breeding program.
Christopher recently posted..No One Asked You, Fat Ass.
You posted the pic and have on it double merle puppies, Antaric x Carrera, wonder if any of the double merle puppies survived. Hmmm scroll down to the next screenshot pic well they did have the litter and oh look there was some tris, as well as blues…well that blows that out of the water where you said about double merles producing double merles. So no dear im not having an aneurysm perhaps your having a stroke! 🙂
Antarctic and Carrera are both merle. This means that on average one in four of their puppies will be double merle. This is a biological fact.
I didn’t call either one of these two dogs a double merle. Read my exact words:
Antarctic IS the son of a blind double merle dog, Avalanche. He, as a merle, was bred to another merle, this most certainly produces double merles. And my question stands, I wonder if any of those double merles survived to be born.
What’s so unclear about this? 5 puppies is a small litter. If one or two double merle puppies were aborted or stillborn, or even “culled” by the breeder at birth, it’d fit the expected outcome better.
Do you suggest that this breeder has found a way to breed two merles and NOT produce double merles? What magic is that?
Christopher recently posted..Confessions of a Pet Connection Groupie
Quotes from UK Kennel Club website, with the cooperation of specific breed clubs. I think it is very unlikely that they are part of a conspiracy promoted by Christopher. However I can’t find a general pronouncement about breeding merlexmerle in other breeds.
“At the suggestion of the majority of the Chihuahua breed clubs in this country, the Kennel Club has decided not to register merle (dapple) Chihuahuas (Smooth or Longcoat) in order to avoid any future possible problems.”
“Merle colouring in the Shetland Sheepdog – updated on 23/07/2010. At the request of the Shetland Sheepdog Breed Council, the Kennel Club agreed that with effect from 6th July 2010, it will no longer accept the registration of any Shetland Sheepdog puppies that are produced as a result of mating two merle coloured parents together.”
“At the request of the Beauceron Club UK, the Kennel Club agreed that, as of 6th July 2010, it will no longer accept the registration of any puppies produced from two tricolour Beauceron parents.” [because in that breed tricolour is produced by the Merle gene]
“At the request of the Bull Terrier Breed Clubs, the Kennel Club has agreed that it will no longer accept the registration of any merle Bull Terrier puppies produced from matings which take place on or after 1st March 2011.”
Even Great Danes are questioned for their coveted harlequins quite awhile ago:
“Harlequin Breeding Forbidden in Germany”.
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http://www.cardigancorgis.com/CodeOfEthics.asp
“Section 2. Members are expected to comply with the following rules. Failure to comply with the following may be considered to be action(s) not in the best interests of the Club or Breed. Leasing an animal does not exempt the owner from complying with these rules.
Blue Merles may be bred to blacks (with or without red or brindle points) only.”
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I have to apologize for my original post on avalanche as I did think it at least possible the M/M breeding was in error. Obviously if the bitch were KNOWN to be merle and the breeding intentional it wasn’t. Equally clearly, there are those who do deliberate M/M breedings. I would wish AKC would follow the UK and deny registration to those dogs resulting from M/M breedings. — since “cryptic” merles are unlikely to be registered as Merles, that would eliminate the issue of an error. I suspect there would be some that would register their sable merles as simply sables to get around the restrictions, but it would at least reduce the issue. I certainly think using an MM dog is wrong and that AKC should consider rejecting offspring from such a dog — most likely the result will be that MM dogs like Avalanche would be put down, but I really do think that it is better to have one than to continue promoting the many that appear to be out there. I had an Aussie in for training years ago — standard Mm merle — but with iris colombas in both eyes (known to be common in Merle Aussies –see
http://www.ashgi.org/color/eyedefects.htm
and yep, got a photo there of a dog with no eyes at all.
I was able to train the Aussie for herding, but he had a tendency to run into chain link fencing on flanks — he just couldn’t see them. I had to tell the owner that this dog just wasn’t going to be useful in most herding situations.
Peggy Richter
No worries, Peggy. This is a lot to swallow. Just wait until I get to the part where Avalanche’s breeder fails to admit that there’s anything wrong with him and denies knowledge of any disorders associated with double merles entirely!
I’m glad that you gave people the benefit of the doubt, it’s an admirable quality.
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Look at all the deaf and blind dogs (mostly aussies) available just from this one rescue organization:
http://www.amazingaussies.com/available.htm
It hadn’t occurred to me before, but there are probably a lot more double merle aussies out there than collies, since they are a much more numerous breed?
Kate
Kate, if you do a google search for ‘double merle collie’ you will find quite a lot of these dogs in rescue, Aussies, Colllies, Shelties, and mixes. I suspect that most of them are bred by amateurs who just want to make pretty dogs, and either don’t understand or don’t care about the potential harm.
However, I fail to see how it is wrong for a breeder of pets to do a merle x merle breeding, but it’s okay for a show breeder to do it. Each litter still has the same statistical chance of producing defective puppies, no matter the purpose behind it.
I think the answer is that the show people know it will happen, and won’t have any issues with putting down the defect puppies. So you never see the really bad ones.
Pet breeders, however, might be less willing to euthanize these puppies, and thus you see them.
Their crime is not that they breed double merles. It’s that the breed double merles and allow the really defective dogs to live.
And if a top show person does it and produces dogs that win ribbons– who the eff cares? The dogs are winning ribbons– that’s the whole point of dog breeding.
And only good breeders show!
Ribbons are all that matters.
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Merle is like a few other colors that cause health issues (see second reference below). I wonder how old the Merle mutation is? Selection of “different looking” dogs, cats, horses, etc seems pretty common, health impacts or no. I wonder if anyone has researched the cause of the “calico” coloration in the Lycaon pictus — while not a particularly close relative of dogs or wolves, I’ll bet that if it can be identified, someone is going to try to find out if it can be safely used in lieu of merle, just as I’ll bet that at some point someone is going to try to introduce zebra color genes into horses. If it turns out that the Lycaon pictus genes are “safer” than Merle, it might replace Merle. I wouldn’t bet on it, but then I wouldn’t have expected florescent fish either.
(http://www.pnas.org/content/103/5/1376.full.pdf+html
Retrotransposon insertion in SILV is responsible
for merle patterning of the domestic dog
Published online before print January 9, 2006, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0506940103 PNAS January 31, 2006 vol. 103 no. 5 1376-1381
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2871368/
Can Vet J. 2010 June; 51(6): 653–657. PMCID: PMC2871368
Coat color and coat color pattern-related neurologic and neuro-ophthalmic diseases
Aubrey A. Webb and Cheryl L. Cullen
Peggy Richter
It’s pretty old.
http://blog.ourcroatianlife.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/possible_dalmatian_egypt.jpg
This is supposedly “an Ancient Egyptian Dalmatian.”
It’s actually a harlequin-colored basenji type dog called a Tesem.
Retrieverman recently posted..West Highland White Terrier Pack
I actually suggested that people tame African wild dogs to breed a safe merle!
Retrieverman recently posted..West Highland White Terrier Pack
I’d want one.
Jess recently posted..Thought This was Apropos
The dog always pays. Whatever the humans do, it’s the dog who pays……..
Thats absolutely correct Cebaka. Dogs give us so much love and they don’t expect anything in return. Their love in innocent. It is us who are selfish not them.
I was troubled that someone who touts themself as a responsible dog breeder would actually breed double merles on purpose. The AKC is experiencing a significant decline in registrations and I would like present anyone who breeds an MM dog as “Exhibit A” and one of the reasons for the decline. A person like me who sees their dogs primarily as beloved pets has no desire to acquire a dog who was cruelly bred or had their ears or tails chopped off. The reasons given for these multilations are “tradition” or “it looks cool”. Give it up, it’s animal abuse!
Wow quite the discussion. I’m not surprised by this article sad as it is. It is so sad that people defend such poor breeding ethics. I would think that people should be breeding dogs to try to improve the breed or keep certain working skills. We live in the same area as this breeder and our old collie who is 14 now used to show the same places as them…..that’s another story. I know only one collie breeder in our area who is breeding her collies looking for dogs that can work her sheep and do sports….colour and markings and a huge show coat and such are not the key traits she’s looking for nor should they be!
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Below are 2 emails sent in response to an email Chris sent to me privately because I questioned his accuracy on these subjects on a performance list. He has not responded to either of my emails. I had inserted an email comment from an animal geneticist friend who actually mapped the merle gene in all breeds and the harlequin pattern in Great Danes. I believe acuracy is important, so I decided to post here.
FYI – The merle has been in the canine gene pool for hundreds of years and predates the creation of specific herding breeds. It is not the creation of diabolical conformation/performance breeders out to set dogdom back to the stone ages. Some of us actually love our breed and strive for the best in health, temperament & conformation, and we do our homework. Since I’m twice as old as Chris and have been in collies for nearly 40 years, I don’t mind saying: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.” R. W. Emerson
Hi Chris,
My geneticist friend actually worked with Dr. Strain on the study you site as indicated in her brief email to me on the subject. I believe that it is the comments in the Q & A with which my friend who actually did the research with Dr. Strain took issue. It was not the quotations from the article you used but the paraphrasing that I believe was the problem. I will ask for a more detailed explanation but it may take a while to get a reply. Among her many jobs are wife & mother, university professor & researcher (CCA just awarded a $120,000 grant among others she’s gotten to do canine genetic research on various health issues). I really can’t give you her info since I bug her enough, and don’t want to be responsible for the rest of the dog world doing so as well.
I knew that what you were saying about the harlequin pattern was incorrect having researched harl pattern in collies (I’ve had a few) and keeping up-to-date with what little research has been done outside Danes. I have written an article on collie color genetics – primarily the merle gene as it relates to blue merles and sable merles in my own breed with the help of two animal geneticists, and a friend, a molecular biologist from MIT who has collies from me. This article appeared in the CCA Bulletin and on COL. Here is a link to my article which contains a link to the merle mapping journal article. http://colliesonline.com/may2009/coat-of-many-colors.php I have the the harlequin pattern in Danes jounnal article somewhere and will search for it and send it after my company leaves.
I have also had double merles over my nearly 40 years in collies, 2 roughs, one of each sex, and 1 smooth male The first two were littermates born in the early ’90’s from an accidental breeding at my house. Cloud was deaf but had reasonably good vision (small cataracts). Celeste was sighted & could hear on her right side; she was an excellent mother and had her Register of Merit. The other is from an accidental litter of a friend. The dam was my breeding. I whelped and raised the litter for her. I have used all 3 of them judiciously in my breeding program and have gotten wonderful, normal blue merles from them with titles in conformation, herding, obedience & agility. I have all my litters eye checked by a board certified ophthalmologist since the ’70’s. I have seen no difference in eye checks in heterozygous merles (blue or sable) and non-merles and neither have either of my eye doctors.
Our smooth boy is both blind and deaf but still lives a full life. He does carting demos, has his CGC, has a 1st level rally obedience title and enjoys backpacking and being a chicken guardian. I’m a little offended by the self-righteousness of some of your respondents about folks who keep homozygous merles and use them in a breeding program. Frost’s sable merle sister is HTCH CH Deep River’s Comfort and Joy CD, RE, NA, HSBs, HSAc, HXAsd, VCX. I don’t apologize for keeping them and try never to throw the baby out with the bath water. Sometimes accidents are a blessing.
I understand that you are giving dog people a forum to discuss issues – a good thing. I send my articles to folks who specialize in research on whatever the subject is to be sure I have everything straight. That’s what I always do before I publish anything on a topic on which I am not an expert (that would be most things with the exception of collies and the English language). I don’t mean to be didactic – but as a retired English instructor, I automatically break out my student research lecture. That’s the only reason I sent your link to my friend – I want to be certain that what I read is correct.
Kathy
http://www.colliesofdeepriver.com
Hi Chris,
I haven’t been able to locate my copy of the research study on harlequin gene identification in the Great Dane. Here is the Great Dane parent club page with a link to the abstract. I believe you will be able to find the original article from there. http://www.gdca.org/health/breakingnews.htm
From what little information we have now, harlequin pattern in herding breeds may not be on the same locus as in the Great Dane. Preliminary testing using collies seems to suggest it isn’t. That info is not too surprising since the pattern looks phenotypically different in collies & shelties than in Danes. I’ve attached photos of 2 harl collies, one rough and one smooth. I’m not sure, but the difference in appearance from herding breed harls may be due to Dane breeders attempting to breed harlequins with no visible merling. For some reason, merles are undesireable in Danes, but harlequins are desireable. They’re fighting something of a losing battle since harls must have a merle gene.
Similarities in all breeds seem to be these: harlequin pattern is only phenotypically present in merles; non-merles may carry the harlequin gene although it is not expressed; homozygous harlequins are lethal; therefore, they die and are reabsorbed prior to birth.
I’ll ask Leigh Anne if she has time to answer questions for you about her work with Dr. Strain. If she says yes, I’ll send your email address to her. I hope my information is helpful.
Kathy
http://www.colliesofdeepriver.com
Hi Kathy,
Thanks for the fact check and for the additional information. This is actually a different post than the one you were discussing with your geneticist friend.
As noted, I was factually incorrect in the comments of that post when I stated that “Harlequin = Merle + Piebald.” I’ve corrected these comments so that wrong information does not get spread. It was informative to learn that phenotype Harlequin = Merle + Harlequin, and the Harl gene is not Piebald, it’s its own unique gene. I’ve also found out that Harl is a lethal semi-dominant, so I will add another post to that series.
I did manage to find the paper that was published on the discovery of the Harl gene. I’ll note that the paper came out AFTER my post. While it’s likely those in the know were not mistaking Piebald with Harl before then, some certainly were as I’m pretty confident I didn’t make up that misinterpretation all on my own.
All things considered, the reality is actually worse than my previous comment suggested, as Harl is itself a lethal gene. HhMm Danes would expect to have significantly smaller litters given they are working with two different homozygous lethals.
Chris said: “All things considered, the reality is actually worse than my previous comment suggested, as Harl is itself a lethal gene. HhMm Danes would expect to have significantly smaller litters given they are working with two different homozygous lethals.”
Clearly that’s only true if both sire and dam are Hh or HhMm. Breeding HhMm to a non-merle without Hh produces no reabsorbtions no defective puppies. Yes, I do know that you’re talking about Danes; however, the same info applies to the following. My HhMm smooth collie was bred to 3 different non-merle sires with the following results – all normal tri colors & blue merles. Two of the litters contained 10 puppies each and one 9 puppies. Some of the blue merles were also harlequin & some were not. My blue merle harlequin collie lived a healthy life to old age and had no vision or auditory impairment. One copy of Mm & Hh is not harmful. The past research on heterozygous merles and vision/hearing defects has been WAY overstated. Let’s not scare people into thinking that merles are any less healthy or any less hardy than their non-merle counterparts. Such information frightens people into harmful gene pool limiting in breeds where genetic diversity is needed.
Someone earlier mentions the horrors of inbreeding in a pedigree. Actually, careful, occasional inbreeding can be beneficial. Some recessive genes are good and worthy of doubling. And another thing. How will you know what undesirable traits you have in a family of dogs if you don’t make informed decisions about inbreeding, linebreeding & outcrossing?
Sure, a HhMm x HhMm cross would turn out about the same as the “Blue Merle Bobtail” cross I demonstrated in this post: The Unfortunate Case of the Wild Australian Shepherd
Harl would work like bobtail, Merle would work the same (of course there are probably slight variations in just how lethal these genes are in different breeds, but without data to account for that, I considered the homozygous state to be “lethal”). The difference, of course, being that Bobtail is fully independent of Merle to produce the phenotype and Harlequin is not. We’d have a “cryptic” or “hidden” Harlequin.
Otherwise, of course, a single HhMm is not doomed to small litter sizes when bred to dogs that won’t allow H and/or M to double up.
Assuming the eggs weren’t purged before being implanted, of course.
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Do we have any reason to believe this would matter?
Christopher recently posted..The Dog Days of Summer
Because corgi breeders say bobtailed doesn’t affect litter sizes because the eggs are aborted before they are implanted.
http://www.welshcorgi-news.ch/Gesundheit/Bobtails_eng.html
Dave recently posted..Sagacity
Sorry Dave, I don’t see any DATA on that page. Show me a study. You know, like this one that shows a 20%+ drop in the size of NBT x NBT litters in Australian Shepherds. http://www.imgnr.com/final_nbt_art_.htm
Christopher…Kudos I began to believe that I was alone out here. I have four collies. I have had American collies for 62 years of my life.
There are many research projects that relate coat color dilution and absence of color to link further speculation and postulations regarding the wisdom of combining IMO and AFAIK with personal genetic studies dilution patterns.
For example: Polymorphism with the MLPH gene are associated with diluted coat color with such issues as alopecia in dogs Black Hair Follicile (BHFD). It is considered now an autosomal recessive condition. Australian Shepards, Bearded Collie, Doberman Pitchers, Wiemaraners, Large Munsterlanders are correlating these scienctific studies.
Believe first research published in Journals of Heredity Oxford Journals named “Chromosomal Assignment of Canine Melanophilin Gene Syndrome (MLPH) found…”
Grisceli Syndrome in humans considered to be partial albinsim with immune deficiency ….
Lethal white horses found to be absence of gangilion cells in the intestines which causes thier death. Basically these missing cells create a condition of the animal dying of its own waste. These cells signal the bowel to empy in the best lay terms I can create.
Hamsters born with no eyes research revealed due to double of a lethal white gene at the C locus.
The harl gene to my understanding to express must have the merle gene and it modifies the expression of the merle gene.
That’s not factually correct. A single copy of the merle gene, Mm, has been shown to cause total deafness in one or both ears in various breeds. I don’t believe anyone has overstated that finding, rather they claim like you that a single copy of the Merle gene is as harmless as the wildtype. That’s factually not the case.
I’m also skeptical of your notion that we shouldn’t question Merle honestly lest we risk a witch hunt. I don’t see that happening and as my series of posts including THIS one, have demonstrated, the issue with Merle and diversity and health is NOT that avoidance of Merle is leading to gene pool problems.
Rather, we have the seeking out of Merle causing not only questionable intentional Merle x Merle breedings but ALSO the concomitant use of highly inbred dogs. Old Avalanche here has a family tree that doesn’t fork all that much. He was born functionally impaired, out of a litter of only one puppy, and yet the breeder still claims that they believe in putting health first and seriously culling their dogs.
I don’t think the evidence supports this. I see all the signs that they made poor and unethical decisions for the sole purpose of creating more Merle and less genetic diversity.
Christopher recently posted..Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy?
Recently two sable-merle headed white male puppies were diagnosed with partially missing in one and missing the tapetum lucidum which apparently is designed together to optimize illumination reaching the retina. Is this also denoted as common deletion in other breeds who carry merle gene.
Now why would this be important? Melanocyites actually are a rather special cell. Embroyic orgin from the same part of the embroyo that forms at the same time central nervous system (brain and spinal cord). At the edge of central nervous system the formation is called neural crest cells.
These special cells migrate throughout the body to form melanocytes of skin, adrenal glands, dentine of teeth, some bones, base of skull, voice box, cornea of eye.
It is said from my studies the skin has the lowest priority possibly due to competion for limited numbers of neural crest cells account for the commest patterns of distribution of white markings on domestic animals.
One does not need to throw Leigh Clark’s name around so to speak but her credits into genetics certainly speaks loud and clear to the breeder who is looking for better answers to healthy, seeing, hearing beautiful collies, who are easy keepers and able to reproduce successfully.
Actually, Chris, it is you who are unequivocally incorrect!!! I just got off the phone with my friend who did the research at TX A&M and published the paper with Dr. Sprain. She has a PhD in animal genetics and is the person whose work I have previously mentioned along with Dr. Sponenberg’s in my own article. I’ll be happy to call him also if you’d like.
I told her what you said in your most recent response to me here. She said, and I quote, “Your friend Chris has completely misunderstood the thrust of our most recent research. We set out to prove that a single copy of merle did NOT cause vision & hearing abnormalities, and that is exactly what we did prove.”
She went on to say that the one and only dog that had such a problem in their study had a gene for piebald, a gene for merle & a gene for harlequin. She said that they were unable to determine whether or not the combination of the 3 might have caused the defect.
The research that has been cited claiming that heterozygous merle is harmful is very old and done in Germany, I believe. All other false data was based upon this original incorrect research.
Please admit your mistake, and don’t continue on this false crusade. Those of us who have spent decades breeding beautiful, intelligent, healthy merles would appreciate contrition from you. I have never had a single collie sable merle nor blue whose eye exams have not born this out. I have had all of my litters checked by a board certified ophthalmologist since the mid- 70’s. I have never had a deaf collie that was not at least 12-years-old merle or not.
If you won’t believe hot-off-the-press science and you won’t believe decades of breeding experience, then I give up! There are PLENTY of real genetic defects in dogdom that need funding, research, and breeder efforts to find and correct. Put your efforts toward those. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything that I don’t do myself!
Kathy
http://www.deeprivercollies.com
Hi Kathy,
I assume you are talking about Leigh Anne Clark lol? Or maybe not. Anyway I just did a quick search and found a recently published paper (2005) by Dr. Clark and others indicating that single merles, in dachshunds at least, DO in fact have increased rates of vision and hearing problems compared to non merles. Here is the link:
http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/ClarkPNASMerle.pdf
Maybe this has been more recently disproven? I don’t know…I just thought it was interesting. I had always understood that one copy of the merle gene is as healthy as a non merle. I also did not know that the harlequin gene can be carried by a non merle–I have a harlequin merle collie myself and I am now curious whether some of her non merle offspring carry the harlequin gene. I am also wondering whether a double harlequin would be lethal even if the merle gene is not present? Have you ever known of a non-merle collie carrying the harlequin gene? I would be curious to know!
Kate Harker
Hi Kate,
I’ll be doing a post on the Harlequin gene here soon. As far as I can tell, the Harlequin in Danes is lethal when doubled, no need to have merle present.
I haven’t investigated if it’s the same gene present in collies. It might not be.
I’ll e-mail you some studies so you can get a head start.
Christopher recently posted..Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy?
I think Leigh Anne doesn’t want me throwing her name around, but it’s really a no brainer if you look at the authors of the journal articles cited here. So, oh well…
Not enough is known yet about harlequin in herding breeds to know for sure whether or not nonmerles can carry the gene. It’s true in Danes, but no one wants to generalize based on the Dane mapping. Since we don’t know the location of harl pattern in collies, it’s very difficult to tell about nonmerles carrier status.
Do you mean this study?
J Vet Intern Med. 2009 Mar-Apr;23(2):282-6. Epub 2009 Feb 3.
Prevalence of deafness in dogs heterozygous or homozygous for the merle allele.
Strain GM, Clark LA, Wahl JM, Turner AE, Murphy KE.
Source
Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA. strain@lsu.edu
Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Deafness in dogs is frequently associated with the pigment genes piebald and merle. Little is known about the prevalence of deafness in dogs carrying the merle allele.
OBJECTIVE:
To determine the prevalence of deafness in dogs heterozygous and homozygous for the merle allele of the mouse Silver pigment locus homolog (SILV) gene.
ANIMALS:
One hundred and fifty-three privately owned merle dogs of different breeds and both sexes.
METHODS:
Hearing was tested by brainstem auditory-evoked response and classified as bilaterally hearing, unilaterally deaf, or bilaterally deaf. DNA from buccal cells was genotyped as either heterozygous or homozygous for the merle allele. Deafness association tests among merle genotype, eye color, and sex were performed by the chi(2) test.
RESULTS:
Deafness prevalence in merles overall was 4.6% unilaterally deaf and 4.6% bilaterally deaf. There was a significant association between hearing status and heterozygous versus homozygous merle genotype. For single merles (Mm), 2.7% were unilaterally deaf and 0.9% were bilaterally deaf. For double merles (MM), 10% were unilaterally deaf and 15% were bilaterally deaf. There was no significant association with eye color or sex.
CONCLUSIONS:
Deafness prevalence in merle dogs was greater than that in some dog breeds homozygous for the piebald gene, such as the English Cocker Spaniel, but comparable to, or lower than, that in the Dalmatian and white Bull Terrier. Dogs homozygous for the merle allele were significantly more likely to be deaf than heterozygotes.
Jess recently posted..Zuulie
Have you even read the Strain Study? “Prevalence of Deafness in Dogs Heterozygous or Homozygous for the Merle Allele, 2009”
While the study has an unfortunately low N, only 153 dogs, despite having the plurality of them (53) Catahoulas which retain much more color and have double merles that look like single merles, and despite having the standard of total deafness, the study clearly shows both unilateral and bilaterally deaf dogs with only one copy of the merle gene.
Table 1. Shows 1 out of 26 Australian Shepherds is unilaterally deaf, 1 out of 7 Shetland Sheepdogs is unilaterally deaf, and 1 out of 4 Great Danes is unilaterally deaf. It also shows that 1 out of 1 Cocker Spaniels is bilaterally deaf.
Everything I said is exactly true and supported by this data.
Christopher recently posted..The Dog Days of Summer
The question, Chris, is did YOU actually understand what you read?
“No attempt was made to determine hearing thresholds or asses partial hearing loss, because the clinical manifestation of pigment-associated deafness is either total deafness or normal hearing for a given ear.”
The operative wording in this quotation is “the clinical manifestations of pigment-associated is either total deafness or normal hearing for a given ear.” Since it’s all or none with “pigment-associated deafness,” why would one check for “partial” deafness?
Furthermore, do you know how many dogs in the control non-merle population were deaf? Answer, there was no control population. However, the researchers themselves say that there should have been. So Chris, how could you attribute those numbers to merle when the entire population was merle and only 3.5% were deaf!!! Doctors Strain & Clark did not control for other factors: other hereditary forms of congenital deafness, piebald, harlequin, Irish spotting, etc.
No one objedts to your linking to scientific articles published in veterinary journals, Chris, but you need the entire picture before you act as an authority on that which you have no training or experience!
“You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.” Thurber
Kathy
BTW- I am not promoting merle to merle breedings here; rather, I am defending the centuries old merle gene that was apparently the work of Mother Nature rather than being the work of humans in search of some sense of false beauty.
One other comment. My friend says that the photo of the 3 Aussies you are using on your site is copyright protected. It belongs to her and has been published in a book. You might want to consider that when you lift photos that belong to other people.
“I am defending the centuries old merle gene that was apparently the work of Mother Nature rather than being the work of humans in search of some sense of false beauty.”
Please name a wild animal that comes in merle caused by the same gene as in dogs. I am interested to know.
Jess recently posted..Zuulie
(1) Do you see me going on a crusade to ban Merle? No. I’m interested in being HONEST about what the effects are of cosmetic genes and weighing that against considerations of health, humaneness, and breeding objectives. This includes being honest and rational about single merle as well as double merle.
(2) There is no moral agent named Mother Nature or God or anything else. Human breeders are the only moral agents here and so when we look at a mutation such as merle, it’s just that, a mutation to a gene. It is not morally defended by “nature” or time or history or anything else.
What we’ve one to dogs, historically and culturally is SO far removed from natural processes, things that happen in nature, gene dispersal rates in nature, culling effects of natural selection, for you to try and give carte blanche to an aesthetic gene that breaks biological processes because it’s “Mother Nature” is a farce.
(3) Merle, double merle, harlequin, etc. are pretty clearly the “work of humans in search of some sense of false beauty.”
(4) Mutations can be beneficial, deleterious, balanced, neutral. There’s no guarantee that just because something happened by a natural process of nature in the first place that it’s good. All of human genetic disease happened by natural mutation processes, and yet so did the mutations that elevated us to a highly successful species.
Nor because a gene appeared under a process of nature does it mean it is still governed wholly by those processes. Unnatural human manipulated selection for aesthetics is the modus operandi in kennel club bred dogs. We pick which ones to breed, we select as much as we can what genes we want passed along, we coddle them with health care, and we certainly don’t subject them to natural pressures.
(5) Fair use.
Christopher recently posted..The Dog Days of Summer
I’ve found some awful stuff on harlequin Danes, beyond what you’ve told me.
Retrieverman recently posted..Identify the crossbreed
Chris, the rub here is that you are not being “honest” nor are you being rational about the merle gene. You apparently surf the internet to collect your “facts” but resist digging deeper. You are often blatantly unfair and lopsided in your pontifications. Because someone uses a double merle to breed to a non merle doesn’t mean their breeding programs are without merit. The resulting offspring are NOT defective because they have a single merle gene.
My experiential knowledge – decades of positive experience with merles – outweighs your own limited expertise. How many merles have you bred? Owned? Over what period of time?
As for the researchers who did the merle studies, apparently you know much more about their work than they do. Therefore, I won’t bother to share their direct expertise with you. Any attempt to question your own analysis is apparently incorrect even if it’s from the scientists who conducted the research and wrote the papers. Good of you to make some changes to your “basically correct” harlequin gene analysis.
It takes time to get direct information from researchers as busy as these folks. It takes a while to show you where your interpretations are in error because I want that to come directly from them. They’re not busy declaring “war” on anyone. They’re working on the science.
You seem to know all there is to know about the MO of “kennel club” people like me who “…coddle them (dogs) with health care …” and “certainly don’t subject them to natural pressures.” You know all these generalizations about breeders of pure bred dogs because, what? You are familiar with so many kennels? Have visited hundreds of them and know their philosophies and motives first hand? If it’s not on the internet, I guess it doesn’t exist according to Chris.
Tell us about your own breeding program. After 5 years of breeding, I’m certain from reading what you write that you have selection all figured out and can teach the rest of us a thing or two.
I’ll stop trying to add views that seems to rock your world. One brief comment about Mother Nature from me brought on this vitriolic diatribe about what’s morally defensible? A merle gene needs a “moral defense”? I’ve given “carte blanche” to a merle gene! Listen to yourself, Chris, and then tell me you’re not on a “crusade.”
Kathy
PS – “Fair Use” was created by the courts to aid professional reasearchers, journalists and teachers. Please tell me about the credentials that qualify you in one of these fields.
Where did you learn your logic and English from, Bill Clinton? That you have to put the word honest in quotes is telling. You post demonstrably false statments, I post direct quotes from the research. When I’m confronted with better data, I’m perfectly willing to change my stance, you don’t appear to possess this quality.
So posting the ACTUAL results of the studies in question isn’t deep enough for you? You bounce between appeals to logical fallacies to your close personal relationship with a scientist who gives you data, but you ignore the critical and obvious: quote the published study. This is the data that we are all aware of and which has the highest probability of not being misinterpreted.
Logical Fallacy: Strawman
I didn’t say anyting about offspring being defective, nor did I say anyting about complete lack of “merit.” I won’t waste my time defending things I didn’t say.
Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Tradition
Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Authority
Your annecdotes aren’t data. If anything, your “experiental knowledge” should let you form better arguments that use data, facts, and make arguments that the unexperienced and ignorant can assess. But those arguments have to stand on their own. You don’t get special permission to say unsupported things just because you’ve lived in proximity to a dog with the merle gene for years.
Why do we need you as a middleman? We have the actual published studies themselves. I quote them, you apparently haven’t even read them.
Why don’t you invite your good friend to comment for herself instead of name dropping and then hinting at some special knowledge you have that’s not published and not reviewable by us mere mortals?
Invite her over, I’d love to cross examine her about her methods.
You’re not the scientist. You didn’t write the paper. If you want to cross examine my statements, why can’t you do it with what’s actually been publically published?
This is what rational adults do. And it wasn’t really a harlequin analysis. It was a comment on a merle analysis. The statement was pointing out that Merle is an integral part of Harlequin Danes, which it is. I incorrectly stated that it was Merle + Piebald, when it’s actually Merle + Harlequin. The key point was that it was a combination of genes (true) and merle was involved (true).
Then let them comment, or use their own published words and data in your arguments.
Christopher recently posted..Who’s Your Double Merle Daddy?
How many of your dogs have died from starvation? How many have died from an infection that wasn’t treated with antibiotics? How many have to compete for food? How many have to hunt for themselves? How many have whelped without assistance, and when have you let “Nature” decide your breeding stock instead of a show judge?
What mankind has done and continues to do with dogs is very unnatural. Trying to pretend that there’s some justification for anything and everything that has become a breeding fad because the alleles are “natural” or “ancient” is really just silly.
Irrelevant. Are you searching for some ad hominem arguments?
Pass. You’re just fishing for some ad hominems.
Logical Fallacy: Circumstantial Ad Hominem
Logical Fallacy: Straw Man
Logical Fallacy: Appeal to Spite
If I’m on a crusade, it’s against stupidity and poor logic, lack of objectivity and appeals to tradition. You’ve said nothing that’s rocked my world. You can’t even read the studies of your BFF and quote them effectively. Nor have you demonstrated even a tiny ability to look at the merle gene objectively. Rather, you’ve demonstrated that you have plenty of reasons to not be objective about it. You think it’s pretty. You breed dogs that color. You win ribbons. You’re in the culture.
This doesn’t mean your wrong. But it means you need to do better than tell me that it’s just the way it is and that your experience is worth more than published data.
You tried to pull a real doozy by claiming that merle must be ok because it’s old and natural. Hemlock and Arsenic are old and natural. Ebola and the Plague are old and natural.
And the entire art of breeding dogs is subject to moral debate. If you don’t think morals and ethics are integral, I feel sorry for the dogs you produce and the example you set.
Courts don’t write laws, they only interpret them. Congress wrote the copyright code. And it says nothing about “professional researchers, journalists and teachers.” Fair Use is available to everyone.
Christopher recently posted..Branding the Cattle
It would be cool to go back to the days of desert-bred Salukis and Azawakhs, where dogs who wandered off usually die of thirst– and the ones who learned to stay close to humans actually survive to reproduce.
Dave recently posted..Sagacity
Copyright laws apply to everyone, not just ‘professionals.’ I don’t understand why there seems to be such a misconception about that.
The law is very clear about copyright not being exclusive. Fair use is a little less clear, but being a ‘professional’ has nothing to do with whether it applies or not.
Jess recently posted..Zora Proves That I Am Stupid
Hey Chris, Did Avalanche’s breeder ever respond to you? I am guessing no…
As an innocent bystander here, I notice that Kathy has not defended deliberate merle to merle breedings…she has only discussed her own double merles, which were all the result of acccidents. I doubt she supports deliberately breeding for double merles…right Kathy?
Once you have the double merle, I don’t think it is immoral to breed from him…it is the deliberately breeding of two merles together to GET him which I find objectionable. Deliberately breeding to get him, having to discard how many of his more handicapped littermates, and then advertising him as a stud, knowing that he is a more desirable stud than a blue merle because anyone can breed their tricolor to him and get a 100% blue merle litter…It’s hard to think of any GOOD reasons as to why anyone would do that. Just my personal opinion. I’d love to hear how the breeder responded to you, if she did.
Incidentally, I know of a collie breeder who is repeatedly breeding a dog who is blind from CEA (detached retinas), which I personally find even worse, because that blindness can actually be passed on–whereas Avalanche’s blindness can not.
Kate
Kate,
I _did_ get a response from a breeder who used Avalanche (she’s since removed the page I linked to on her site) and his breeder too. Both before they knew what I wrote. The breeder who used him wrote back after reading the article as well.
I’ll be publishing both of those e-mails unedited some time soon. I’d like to write some commentary to go along with it. And I’ve been weighing the decision to publish. I think in this case it will be beneficial to demonstrate the thought process of why this happens and why breeders don’t appear to have a problem with it.
Before that though, I’m working on a few posts on Harlequin. I thought double merle was bad. It’s worse in Danes in just about every way.
Christopher recently posted..Wyoming Bound
And by “good” reasons I mean reasons other than the desire for fame and fortune in the collie world…
This guy totally masturbates to his hits
“You seem to know all there is to know about the MO of “kennel club” people like me who “…coddle them (dogs) with health care …” and “certainly don’t subject them to natural pressures.” You know all these generalizations about breeders of pure bred dogs because, what? You are familiar with so many kennels? Have visited hundreds of them and know their philosophies and motives first hand? If it’s not on the internet, I guess it doesn’t exist according to Chris. ”
Grow up, Kathy. Do you allow your dogs to choose their own mates? No? Raise your pups inside the house? Climate control the room they’re in? Worm and vaccinate them? Make sure the small or weak ones get enough to eat? Bottle feed if necessary? Ever tube fed a pup? Save the defective ones to place in ‘pet homes?’ Do you use any sort of technological assist in your breedings? AI? Progesterone testing? Ever worked extra hard to get a bitch with ‘desirable’ characteristics pregnant? Supplement progesterone to keep the pregnancy going? Give her antibiotics during heat and pregnancy?
No, not all breeders go that far. But plenty do, or such interventions would not be readily available, would they? Invoking mother nature regarding dogs is the height of ignorance and arrogance.
What do you think would happen, Kathy, if you went on a big Collie mailing list and announced that your bitch would be whelping and rearing her pups in a hole in the ground? I know what would happen, because I’ve been told I’m ‘cruel’ and ‘irresponsible’ simply for not having air-conditioning to keep my pups comfortable. Poor things, the stress!
It we left it up to mother nature we wouldn’t have breeds. And we certainly wouldn’t need to depend on a myriad of health tests to make sure we were producing ‘healthy’ puppies.
Jess recently posted..Zora Proves That I Am Stupid
Also note Kathy’s assumption that Christopher is not a ‘kennel club’ breeder who has produced registered puppies and/or competed in ‘kennel club’ events.
An insider, of course, would NEVER criticize breeder practices IN PUBLIC.
Jess recently posted..Zora Proves That I Am Stupid
Kathy
I don’t claim to know any of the facts in this case having read none of the studies in question. I do own a Merle collie and bred a Merle litter within the past year. However I must say that your condescending, belligerent attitude here doesn’t lend much support to your arguments. It seems as though you came here, not so much to lay out the facts in your argument, but to pick a fight. How can you pretend to hold the morale high ground with that sort of behavior?
My take is they aren’t with any merit, and intentionally breeding double merles (requires intention for a reason) should be considered animal cruelty under animal cruelty statutes.
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“Because someone uses a double merle to breed to a non merle doesn’t mean their breeding programs are without merit. The resulting offspring are NOT defective because they have a single merle gene.”
This is the second time someone in this Merle debate is ignoring the initial act of creating MxM on the basis that -the offspring of that created MxM- won’t have a risk of defect when bred to a inon-Merle dog.
Why does the initial – purposeful risk of creating of deaf/blind offspring- keep getting a pass (but only if you’re a winning show breeder, of course)?
Because they didn’t make the double-merle. Not guilty by association, you see.
The common thread in these types of ‘conversations’ is that you don’t talk about ‘harmful’ practices in dog breeding. Even if people do it. Period. Either it ‘provides fodder for the ARs’ (no, sweetie, the very fact that those practices exist provides plenty of fodder by itself), or it’s ‘sour grapes’ from a non-show breeder, or ‘you hate purebreds and think people should only have mutts.’ (I place ‘harmful’ in quotes due to the vast grey area about what is actually harmful.)
I’ve been accused of all of the above. I’ve even been told that such things should not be talked about AT ALL in ‘public’ where the pet people might hear. (It’s no accident that Christopher is not plagued by hordes of pet people telling him how awful and stupid he is.)
The irony of ‘don’t pick on us show breeders, we don’t all do that’ doesn’t escape me, doing the kind of breeding that I do.
Jess recently posted..Zora Proves That I Am Stupid
Dave’s comment has reached the end and won’t let me reply there:
“It would be cool to go back to the days of desert-bred Salukis and Azawakhs, where dogs who wandered off usually die of thirst– and the ones who learned to stay close to humans actually survive to reproduce.”
For the most part Saluki and Azawakh are still bred and raised ‘traditionally.’ This means that there is no vaccination, no special care for weak pups, and pups are reared in a hole in the ground outside. Azawakh litters are traditionally culled down to one or two pups. The other pups are exposed to the elements; their fate in placed ‘in Allah’s hands.’
Traditionally, if the dogs do not come back when they are taken hunting, they are left to die. This culls dogs that are prone to disobedience.
Even dogs that are raised within modern ‘facilities,’ if you will, are raised with an entirely different attitude. Weak pups are not supplemented, if the dam doesn’t have enough milk, pups will die. It’s very harsh, to our Western view, but it produces tough dogs and keeps the gene pool clean of ‘weak genes.’ This is not a quantifiable quality, but it is there. I’ve seen it in my Azawakh, and in the parents of my Tazi bitch.
Anatolian shepherds are raised very similarly, or they were traditionally in Turkey. As a result they are a large/giant breed that commonly lives to 13 or 14 years of age. I’m sure that will change soon enough, now that they are in the AKC and being shown in conformation 🙁
I expanded the nesting limits to 10 now, see how that works. I think the width is large enough and the font size small enough to handle it.
Christopher recently posted..Love Them and Leave Them, Italian Style
Ha! I knew you were going to expand on that!
Yes, my great-grandparents used to raise dogs this way in North America: fed them a diet of fish-heads, table scraps, sick chickens; whelped outside in the rain; and any pups or dogs that wandered off by itself was taken by coyotes, wolves or cougars. However referring to these days would get the westernized breeders all hot-blooded, and gets them screaming about cruelty to animals.
First Nations raised their dogs too, but the state of affair on the reservations… um: let just say, they don’t treat their dogs very well, in a training sense– very physically abusive, so it is not fair to draw parallels with their philosophy.
However from what I can tell, people in Central Asia and the Middle East still very much care for their dogs, they treat them very well and they love their dogs just as much as we do. In addition, they still carry out these old-time practices. So the analogy between western and traditional customs makes better senses here.
If Kathy wants to be “natural,” she going have to let spoiled food devastates the ones with poor immune systems, let the disobedient and stupid dogs be taken by predators and let the weak pups die in the rain. Defending merle on the basis of Mother Nature makes no sense when humans stopped letting the elements dictate the breeding health of their dogs.
Dave recently posted..Sagacity
I figured you were baiting me 🙂
You run into some interesting things as well when you are talking about Muslim dog breeders; dogs are unclean, and even though the Saluki, Azawakh, Afghan, etc. would be exceptions as hunting dogs, you do not want dogs that are going to go up and touch guests who may well be more observant than you are. Such dogs have a reputation for being aloof, that sort of selection is probably the primary reason.
My Tazi Nazgul was raised outdoors, in a dog house, in the summer, one out of a litter of ten. Her mother Adel raised all ten puppies with no help other than plenty of food, until they started onto solid food at three weeks old. There was no forced weaning, and she stayed in excellent shape, even nursing ten pups. That is the legacy of her Kazakh parents, which are still ‘unspoiled’ dogs.
The Saluki community had a shit fit about that litter. Which is ironic considering how proud Saluki people are about how the breed has remained ‘unchanged.’
If you want to get right down to it, we wouldn’t have dogs at all if we hadn’t mucked about with mother nature.
I have my own little pet hypothesis regarding Islam and unclean dogs. From what I understand the uncleanness in dogs comes from their saliva. This is probably associated with Rabies, as dog saliva by itself is rather harmless.
This parallels the “Dog Days of Summer” theme regarding dogs, heat, rabies, and thick saliva. The founding climates of Islam are hot and arid for much of the year, so perhaps they too associated the clinical signs of rabies with the normal signs of heavy dog panting during hot dry days.
Christopher recently posted..The Dog Days of Summer
http://desertwindhounds.blogspot.com/2010/10/incantation-for-dog-bite.html
That kind of makes sense since the taboo of seafood consumptionduring Lent among Christians, and altogether for Jews, is probably associated with the lack of knowledge about red tide.
Dave recently posted..Ultimate Breed Myth
That’s actually a pretty good theory.
I believe Dave you altogether correct that lack of knowledge and enjoyed your Ultimte Breed Myth. http://www.vgl.ucdavis.edu/services/dog/Piebald-Parti.php
The merle gene is a incomplete dominant semi-lethal.
The harlequin gene is a dominant and potentially in double dose lethal.
Now we see the necessity of Great Danes to test for presence of SINE at MITF in one or two doses.
A much better plan than say, culling Rhodesian ridgebacks with no ridge, groenendaels with white on the chest ( I met someone who did that back in the 80s), etc.
Let PETA, the AKC or whomever, go after those guys before they tackle someone who lets nature take a hand.
Central Asians in their countries of origin are also raised very similarly. I am not quite as rigorous with my pups, but I also do not move heaven & earth to save weak pups, nor will I continue to breed bitches that need C-sections, or who don’t produce enough milk, or who hate their pups & refuse to stay with them, etc. They stay outside, they don’t live in climate-controlled conditions, & I don’t rush them to the vet every time they sneeze. These are supposed to be tough, vigorous dogs that don’t need much help surviving. And mine fit the bill to a T.
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http://www.hondenpage.com/hondenforum/90679/sheltie-blue-merle..php
A very long time ago, I bought a Samoyed puppy and it was not until 16 months before I realized he was blind, confirmed to have been from birth. When I confronted the breeder, She had died and so nothing could be found out about. it I kept my Tundra for 12 years and he had an extraordinary life as a pet , playing with 8 other collies and a lab and never missing a beat or step. Wonder what went wrong here? This was an exceptional example of the Samoyed breed.
Don’t lose heart, rough collie lovers: Check out the WICANI COLLIES website and prepare to swoon: Angela Harvey is a British fancier whose collies have won championships all over Europe for the past 30 years. Her dogs are beautiful, intelligent, and structurally sound. Dismayed by the ever-shrinking gene-pool in the UK, she began importing normal-eyed North American collies last year and the results have been sensational! She isn’t just breeding to win prizes: She’s working to bring down the UK inbreeding coefficient (hers is now between 6% and 13%), and to eliminate Collie Eye Anomaly and the MDrN1 gene that causes so many fatal drug reactions by ONLY breeding animals that have tested clear. Oh, and before I forget, she’s one of the UK’s most celebrated producers of blue merles (bred the RIGHT way, from tri/blue matings)so please, if the Wyndlair articles have got you all dejected about the state of the Rough Collie, a visit to the Wicani site will cheer you right up….
Collies in the UK do have an unnecessarily small gene pool. Why not allow rough to smooth breedings? That would effectively double the number of dogs in the gene pool, without the hassle of transatlantic imports.
There are also some wonderful smooth dogs in Germany, Norway, Finland, the Czech Republic, etc. Beautiful, talented, and healthy.
You are confused by the Merle gene and CEA. They are separate. While meeker can tend to exhibit CEA more often than non keeled due to lack of pigmentation, being a Merle does not mean the dog has CEA. Most collies, Merle or not, ARE affected with CEA. It’s called mild choriodal dysplasia. It has to do with pigmentation and the affected dog can see just fine. CEA and the Merle gene are not connected. Normal eyes are preferrable when available for breeding, but as a responsible breeder you are breeding for the whole picture instead of getting hung up on one point. I would personally rather see a line of collies with CRA than one with epilepsy. Breeding isn’t as simple as you may think. Do your homework before passing judgement on something you are not involved in.
No, I’m not confusing CEA with Merle, the dogs in question have both. And no, it’s not called “mild” anything. And no, affected dogs can’t “see just fine.”
You aren’t a responsible breeder, you’re a brainwashed unethical breeder who clearly places intangibles above health and well-being, and you’re deluding yourself about disease because you don’t have the courage to do something about it.
Puppy buyers aren’t as simple as you may think, and I’m certainly not as simple as you may think. I breed, I know, and my judgment is justified.
Looks like my auto correct text changed a few of my merles to keeled haha. I don’t think you know much about collie eye anomaly. There are three stages of affected dogs. Mildly affected dogs can see. Ask any canine ophthalmologist. Some affected dogs are so mildly affected they are referred to as “go normals” as the pigmentation in the eye covers the defect as the dog ages and when the eye is examined as an adult the eye will look normal but genetically the dog is affected. I own several mildly affected dogs who can see. Around 90% of collies are mildly affected. They are not blind. Unless the dog has complete retinal detatchment it will not be blind. Blindness caused by a dog with two Merle genes is not caused by CEA. This information is from board certified ophthalmologists not mere opinion.
I love how you, as a Grade A asshole, decided to create a strawman argument that Chris said that double merle and CEA are the same– which you then took down to make yourself look more brilliant than you obviously are.
So what are you gonna do about CEA?
Not a damn thing.
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> Mildly affected dogs can see
Sight is not a binary quality. The two states are not perfect vision and complete blindness. Vision is a range. Duh.
> go normals
You’re confusing the opthamologist’s ability to diagnose CEA using an eye exam with the actual disease and impairment caused by the disease. The layer of tissue that is most affected by CEA during embryo formation can be obscured by the layers of tissue above coming into their full saturation of color as the puppies age. This masks the changes, it does not repair them. No one has documented that dogs gain function back and “mild” and “go normal” dogs still can produce dogs with profound impairments.
> my dogs can see
How well? Oh, see, there’s the issue. Without active participation by the dog who can not speak to how well it sees and respond to more sophisticated tests that we have in humans, the crude tests available to the canine opthamologist can’t tell us the level of impairment. You can’t tell me if your dogs had blurry vision, or dead spots, floaters, or eye pain. Sometimes impairment is so subtle that, say, the inability to see well in the dark can only be realized by noticing that a dog will not enter a dark room or moves slower and more carefully at night.
> affected dogs, not blind
So a dog has to be 100% blind for you to care? Pathetic.
> Board Certified Opthamologist
Let’s invite some opthamologists to read what Collie breeders have to say about their affected dogs and how ugly normal eyed dogs are, let’s see if they agree with how you breeders are characterizing healthy and affected dogs.
> Complete retinal detachment
Are you so dense that you think that CEA is the only condition that can cause malformations of the eye and blindness? CEA isn’t the only condition that can affect the retina or the other structures in the eye. Likewise, Merle related impairment and blindness can come in all sorts of forms with or without tears in the iris, etc.
> Blindness caused by a dog with two Merle genes is not caused by CEA.
Duh. Who said this? Not me. You have horrible reading comprehension. I noted that the same dogs noted in my post have produced CEA Affected offspring meaning that they are at minimum carriers of CEA themselves, something that outside of a DNA test, results of which have not been published, might not be detectable due to the severe impairment caused by being a double merle. That, in itself, is an ethical issue. By intentionally breeding a double merle stud the breeders are also obscuring any ability to diagnose all the eye issues that have no DNA test. How is a breeder to know about the other disorders that could be present when the eye is so clearly malformed?
I find it interesting that you are so quick to slander someone you don’t know and how quickly you assume I am even a breeder or what my ethical Stance is for my line of collies without any background on who I am or what I practice.
Jennifer, you make it all too easy to criticize you, you’ve given me everything I need.
(1) I actually read your comment where you clearly imply that you are a Collie breeder with the defeatist things you say. Are you denying that you’re a Collie breeder now? Where do you get off telling lies about me, that I am not a breeder, and then claim that you are not one, but then are one again? You’re talking in circles Jennifer.
(2) Like many other unethical Collie breeders you try and insert “mild” in front of CEA so you can lie to yourself and others that it’s not an issue you have to do anything about. CEA is rampant in the breed, nearly saturated, and yet you can not name one breeder who has done anything constructive to bring in a healthy form of the gene, specifically by out-crossing. This is a simple recessive that there is a test for, and there has been a test for a while, and yet no progress at all has been made by breeders. Then you lie that it has no affect on the dogs, they are “just fine” as if you have any ability to actually test the level of vision loss.
There are dozens of breeds which compete at Frisbee competitions but I’ve yet to see even one Rough Collie. I’d say that’s in no small part to the collection of eye diseases and horrible head shape that Collie breeders have propagated, the dogs are simply poor at tracking and catching discs. I’ve even searched youtube for Collie’s catching discs and most of the videos show dogs that are very poor athletes with equally poor catch rates.
(3) You made your ethical stance quite clear. You dodge CEA and you pretend that “the whole picture” is justification to do so. This is clearly code for “it doesn’t matter how unhealthy the dogs are, they still win ribbons.”
(4) Slander requires that what I say is false. You are a collie breeder and your dismissal of CEA makes you unethical. I am a breeder and I know plenty about breeding, ethics, CEA, and Merle, so the only slander here is what you’ve said.
Wow. You enjoy assuming. I didn’t say I was or was not a breeder, I said you seem to assume everything without confirming. Which is not wise. You have never met me so you obviously know nothing about me other than a few informative comments. I am simply giving you the facts about CEA. I didn’t say what my personal preference was as far as any litters I decide to breed. I do prefer to breed normal eyed dogs but that is not the only thing I breed for as I want the whole picture. Structure, conformation, temperament, etc. As far as frisbee competitions, perhaps you are unaware that collies are not retrievers they are herders. They compete in herding competitions as that is the vocation they were bred for. They are not hunting dogs or retrievers. Obviously good eyesight is required for herding sheep. And as far as false accusations, if you don’t know me, how do you know what you say about me is true or not? When arguing a valid point, if one wants to gain any respect, you present the facts. Let the reader decide. You don’t post accusations or rude remarks. It is a fact that most collies have some form of CEA. It is also true that most collies can see. Obviously mildly affected dogs can see. This is a fact. That does not mean we shouldn’t try to breed for normal eyes. It just means mildly affected dogs can see. CEA is a breed issue. Every breed has an issue and breeders are going to have to deal with it and try to improve it. Unfortunately there is no fast solution and there is more to a collie than their eyes.
> Wow. You enjoy assuming.
The simple matter is that I’m correct and you’re the only one who assumed and got it wrong. You are a Collie breeder because no one else would be so deluded to say the things you have said. It’s also obvious from the e-mail you used to comment with. From this, a simple google search leads to your full name and address, your kennel name, pedigrees of dogs with your name and kennel on them, etc. Just in case your e-mail is being faked (and really, who would bother) the ip address matches.
If I did assume, I’d have to guess that you breed dogs with tiny eyes, you are probably in favor of sable merle and you subject your puppies to ridiculous and arguably torturous treatments for the sake of winning show ribbons. And yes, I’d be right about all of those things too, as photos of your dogs demonstrate. Plenty of dogs with sunken, tiny eyes. A sable merle with china eye. And puppies with ear tape to defraud the show standard.
> As far as frisbee competitions, perhaps you are unaware that collies are not retrievers they are herders.
I’ll have to remember to tell all the Border Collies, Australian Shepherds, Cattle Dogs, Belgian Malinois, Bulldogs and Whippets that they are doing the wrong thing and that they are NOT retrievers.
> They compete in herding competitions
Wow, I’ve never seen one at a real herding competition. Perhaps you’re confusing the “I let my dogs chase sheep for a minute or two and they got an HIC” with a “herding competition.”
As for true vocation, who uses Collies? There are certainly more Border Collies being used as true herding dogs on real ranches and farms than Collies. Heck, there are easily many more Aussies and Cattle Dogs working too. Finding a true working Collie is probably even more difficult than finding one that is clear for CEA. Vanishingly rare.
> false accusations
Again, nothing I’ve said is false, despite your games.
> Most collies can see
Gosh, who said they couldn’t? Not me. Saying “most collies can see” is sort of like saying “most pugs can breathe.” Well, true, but how well?
When I say the whole picture is important it doesn’t mean I think CEA is unimportant. But what good is a normal eyed dog who has epilepsy or bloat or hip dysplasia or has an aggressive temperament.
You people seem to know a lot about me for not having met me, considering in reality the dogs in my yard are normal eyed and so was the sire of my last litter. Personally, I wouldn’t breed Merle to Merle but I have no problem with Merle to non Merle breedings. I just noticed there seemed to be a misconception regarding double dilute eye problems and CEA, but apparently instead of sharing information or trying to learn everyone seems to enjoy using foul language and insults instead of anything productive. Name calling never got anyone anywhere. Information and facts and a sincere quest for knowledge and productivity are the tools that will help solve problems.
Christopher is not confusing the two at all.
When being a white dilute interferes with the development of the eyes, how can one actually test to see if the dog is a carrier of CEA or not?
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There is a DNA test for CEA. It’s not cheap.
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http://www.optigen.com/opt9_test_cea_ch.html
It is rare to do a DNA test for CEA, yes? Most I am aware of would rather do the eye-exams.
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Romany collies tests their dogs:
http://www.romanycollies.com/index.html
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It’s uncommon, but that’s because CEA is so prevalent in the breed. An optho exam is the norm when the puppies are about 7-8 weeks old. This will differentiate the puppies with CEA from the puppies with really bad CEA.
I did have one of my dogs tested; she was a noncarrier. The dog she was bred to was also DNA tested N/C, so none of the resulting pups needed tested. They were all noncarriers by default. If I bred my affected bitch to a N/C stud, none of the pups would be DNA tested – they’d all be normal-eyed carriers.
The DNA test is only useful if you have a normal eyed dog who *might* be a noncarrier. For instance, from two normal-eyed parents, or one NE and one noncarrier. In those cases, it is invaluable.
Oh my word you’re rude but whatever. If all I did was care for ribbons I wouldn’t have sable merles would I? There is nothing wrong with sable merles. They are the same as blue merles only with the sable gene instead of the tricolor gene. I have a busy life and I would love to have the time to compete in the herding arena, but I work full time and can’t do it all. However, my dogs do show their herding instinct and I was at the CCA National herding competition and there are many collies who can herd very well. Border collies are better herders — they are a very specialized breed that focused on herding and herding alone. Collies weren’t as focused, they herded but they also guarded and did other farm work. The border collie is more specialized while the collie is more an all around farm herding dog.
Ear glue is not invasive or painful to dogs. The cones used to keep dogs from chewing on stitches are much more invasive and I don’t see you downing them.
Just because a dogs eyes are not large and round doesn’t make them defective. You CAn have beautiful dogs that are healthy and can see.
What I would like to see is a post from you where you didn’t degrade the individual you were replying to. information and knowledge are the tools used in an effective argument.
> rude
Oh, how so?
> sable merles
A quick perusal of just one of your dog’s pedigrees shows that you have no problem with dogs bred from sable merles (who never proved themselves in the ring, isn’t that what your whole show career focus is about?) nor dogs who have Ch’s despite being sable merle (is that not defrauding the standard, yet again). So you cryptically have no problem with dogs bred against the standard, despite an equal fixation on following the rules to produce the perfect dog to the standard? Why don’t you just leave the showing behind and breed dogs to your own standard? Surely you can’t actually like what show people have done to the collie.
> compete in the herding arena
Even if you could devote your life to herding competitions, they are still an artifice. And frankly an artifice that collies are no longer very good at. You state that Border Collies are somehow over-focused on herding, apparently to the detriment of something else. But what do Collies have to offer instead that Border Collies don’t have? They’re not very smart, they’re not very healthy, they’re not very popular, and I wouldn’t trade a Collie’s temperament for a Border Collie’s. Not that comparisons really matter. I don’t sleep better at night because Border Collies are smarter, more athletic, healthier, or nicer than Collies. Border Collies excel in all those things, but I think they can be better, regardless if they’re already the best.
> all around farm dog
So that’s why they’ve fallen from most popular dog to rare side show breed? It’s a rather amazing collapse given just how popular they once were as a show dog. Their current numbers in the AKC are pretty small. Perhaps there’s some other registry out there that has more of them? I don’t think the show ring has done any favors for the breed, it seems they’ve been “improved” right into obscurity.
> Ear glue
Oh it’s painful to dogs, I’ve seen this first hand. It rips the hair out from inside the ears, the under sides of the glue pads are prone to infection, you have to leave the tape on for days or weeks at a time while risking further accident and injury due to getting snagged. Dogs that forget about their collars after an hour will scratch and paw at their ear contraptions for days or more. And for what purpose do you inflict these on puppies? To defraud the standard because you are a failure at breeding to the standard. Why have tipped ears in the standard when no one can actually breed them? It’s a very silly charade.
And comparing totally unnecessary ear tipping devices with an e-collar which is used to prevent injury and not promote it, is a laugh. I’ve never heard of an e-collar injury but ear taping? Plenty.
The all-around farm dog is called the English shepherd, not the aardvark collie with beady eyes.
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So a dog that looks like an aardvark with beady eyes is “beautiful”?
LOL
That’s why breed standards are a crock!
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Hi Jennifer,
I see this thread is quite a few years old, but I see you have some experience in sable merle and I’d like to get some quidence if you wouldn’t mind. I know that a you should never breed 2 blue merles, I was wondering if the same applies to a blue merle and sable merle cross. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Michele
Do not breed a blue merle x sable merle. It’s the same effect. You can get double merles and they can be blind/deaf, etc.
Thank you very much Jennifer for your reply! I am glad that I saw this article as I almost bought a blue merle whose dam is blue and sire is a sable merle and I thought to research it a bit. I truly wish more breeders would be conscientious of what they may be doing to their puppies. Thank you so much once again for your informed advice!
Sincerely,
Michele
As for my dogs I am proud of them and have nothing to hide.
There is no point in talking to someone who gets a rise out of downing other people and their dogs. So you like border collies, that doesn’t make other breeds bad it’s just not your preference. Dogs are different just like people, it doesn’t make anyone better if they look or act a certain way, same with dogs. Sable merles are NOT condemned in the collie standard. Matching eyes are preferable but blue eyes are not a disqualification and never have been. I don’t appreciate having some arrogant stranger telling me how crappy they think I am without having met me, and then say that is not rude. That is unbelievable to me but no one can control anyone’s actions but their own. So I will just be glad I choose not to talk crap about other people for the fun of it.
So if someone is concerned about the welfare of dogs, they are considered as “enjoying drowning other people and their dogs”?
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You’re welcome to do with your time what you will, but recall that this is my soap box and you’ve clearly failed to read my many posts on this subject which describe the issues with Merle and double merle in detail. Thus it is both uninformed and perhaps as you say “rude” to come here and accuse me of being wrong about CEA and Merle when I’m clearly not.
Why don’t you expand your mind and read up. I’d suggest you start HERE and then click back through to page 1.
As for “getting a rise out of downing” Collies, do you think the breed is above reproach? Are they so wonderful and their breeders so adept that I should refrain from criticizing them? If you spent more time reading here than trying to preach at me, you’ll see that the purpose of my comparisons and analysis of other breeds is not to put Border Collies or any other breed on a pedestal but rather to not continue and repeat the mistakes and abuses of a breeding culture which is antiquated, uninformed, and faddish.
Border Collie breeders have bred merle to merle, have transformed the conformation of the breed to fit fads such as excessive coat and even ear tipping, etc. This exercise is not one of inflating the Border Collie ego, it’s an analysis and warning of what can happen when breeders drink the koolaid. The downfall of the Collie is a lesson, one I hope won’t be repeated.
I’m also amused that you’d be so miffed about smack talking breeds when it is, in fact, you who decided that you needed to puff up your breed vs. the Border Collie, diverting the conversation from the specifics and ethics of merle toward inter-breed politics.
> Dogs are different just like people, it doesn’t make anyone better if they look or act a certain way, same with dogs.
That’s relativistic bunk. Everything is not equal, in fact very very few things are equal. Everything is not moral or just or optimal or even good. I’m amazed you’d even try this argument given your profession of belief in one true God and enshrinement of one text and one faith above all others.
And, so, you would have to agree that it DOES make people better if they act a certain way. Or would you claim that stealing is equal to earning, killing equal to healing, lies equal to truth? I seriously doubt you’re a nihilist anarchist.
> I don’t appreciate having some arrogant stranger telling me how crappy they think I am
Again, my blog, you came here and told me that I was wrong when clearly I am not and provided no actual argument to back up your accusation. I always appreciate fact checking, but I don’t appreciate poor reading comprehension and arguments that are simply wrong.
And I don’t think you’re crappy, I think your arguments are crappy. I also think your ethics are crappy, and that makes you by definition unethical. How can we not conclude that every Dalmatian breeder that does nothing to rid their breed of Uric acid problems is not ethical and how can we not say that all Collie breeders that do nothing to rid their breed of CEA are unethical. Ethics are meaningless if you get to ignore them and still “be” ethical.
Jennifer, I love collies too – got my first one in 1997 and haven’t looked back. At this point, I wouldn’t own anything else. They’re certainly not border collies – thank goodness! If they were in college, border collies would be the A+ engineering students. Collies would be hanging out on the campus lawn, playing guitar and smoking pot. And calling everyone “bro”.
Although BC and collies share the same background, they’d been taken on different paths. The BC results from years of selective breeding for the qualities that make an excellent sheepdog. The collie results from years of selective breeding to make a big, fluffy, pretty, show dog. Behind both is a firm foundation of biddable, people-oriented, highly trainable dogs. (like Retrieverman said, the foundation dogs are best represented by the modern English Shepherd, not the collie or the BC)
The breed isn’t perfect; no breed and no dog is. Certainly no breeder is. Please don’t fall back on the “you can’t judge me” line – I can and I will. I’ll judge your dogs, your breeding program; and grant you the same opportunity. Judging our actions, and the results of those actions, is how we become better people. And some dogs really are better than others.
However, you’re only hurting yourself if you take what Chris says personally. As much as I love the collie breed, I do acknowledge that there are plenty of breeders who do it a disservice. Eyes, for instance – most breeders just take it for granted that their dogs will have CEA, and it’s only bad if the dog has colobomas and/or goes blind.
Discussing the bad is the best way to discover what’s good. Bringing up unethical breeding practices is a great way to open up a conversation about what makes a good breeder. Talking about the problems in the breed (and yes, there are plenty) is how we find ways to avoid them. Get a little angry; it’s better than having your head in the sand.
Sable merles are contentious – at this point, the standard doesn’t mention them specifically. Due to real or perceived bias, some breeders avoid them. (for non-collie people: the AKC standard mentions four colors – sable, tri, blue, and white). I think it’s due to the problem of producing homozygous merles by accident. Just like the longtime bias against white collies was in part due to fears about not being able to distinguish a blue-headed white from a MM.
It always cracks me up when people say they have herding dogs & then say they’ve just earned an HIC. All an HIC says is the dog showed a desire to make the sheep move. HELLO, chasing sheep is FUN! Plenty of dogs I wouldn’t let NEAR my livestock think chasing is fun! A herding dog does a lot more than gleefully chase sheep. The HIC is a joke among real herding people.
My other favorite are the show people who say things like “Oh my dogs can do the task for which the breed was developed but I just don’t have the time to do it with them”. Oh, they can? But you’ve never tried? So how do you know? Your knowledge is purely theoretical. Once you get some practical experience at the task in question, then you are welcome to debate how some part of some written standard actually has an impact on a dog’s ability to work.
Also, just because your CEA Collie isn’t completely stone blind doesn’t mean she or he sees well enough to be a useful addition to a working farm. And you can’t claim to know how badly her “slightly” impaired vision will affect her or his working ability when you don’t work your dogs & therefore have no idea what a working dog in action looks like or how to evaluate a dog’s potential working ability.
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This discussion has wandered rather far afield, but this just cracks me up–define “real herding people”, please. Most people out there with herding breeds do not have farms for which they need a dog to perform daily duties–and herding trials, no matter who puts them on, are simply artificial and arbitrary. Yet most Border Collie people, when they talk of “working lines” talk about trial dogs, NOT farm dogs.
I have Shelties, which are probably a created breed, but many do show herding instinct. I don’t pretend to think of them as herding dogs, though I did train one to herd for a while (then I moved, and it just wasn’t convenient anymore). I don’t NEED them to herd. So I could give a damn about their “original purpose.” They are excellent Agility and Flyball dogs and great companions.
I also have Italian Greyhounds. They fulfill their “original purpose” admirably, and may be one of the few breeds that does. They are companion dogs. They occasionally catch small vermin. They make amazing bedwarmers. (I’m pretty sure they were selectively bred for bedwarming.) They are also turning in to nice Agility dogs. But I don’t have to pretend anything about “original purpose” with them, and it’s quite a relief.
Nora agree off topic. Think the point of CEA being present in herding breeds and greatest number in Collies is no contest with over 80 percent of the breed. Sadly, the complacent nature of collie show dog breeders has likely created these numbers.
Failure to recognize among these breeders to grasp new scientific breeding tools.
1. CEA simply to me means: Failure of the cells of posterior portion of the optic vessals to express growth hormone that ultimately affects other cells of the eye.
2. SINE exonic insertion in the PTPLA gene leads to Collie Eye Anomoly CEA and affecta negatively the growth and underdevelopment of the retina/choroid/sclera which this mutation is now documented and marker available.
3. The underdelvelopment in choroid especially lateral to optic disc is known as hypoplastic. If a collie is marked just with hypoplsia thier are those who kid themselves this is not CEA.
4. A coloboma is due to failure of closure of embroyonic tissue. Many accept colobomas it would seem as part of a show dog?
http://www.nature.com/scitable/content/leader-of-the-pack-gene-mapping-in-700103
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2253978/
Gee Anna have seen totally blind collies herd and so have many others who can testify to the fact. Indeed the Border Collie is the Jim Thorpe of the herding breeds, No one will deny this fact. However, how many Border Collies have you seen like Chris and Dublin?
Ehm, a blind dog does not need eyeballs! It needs eyesight!
Its so f-ing cruel and egoistic to breed dogs that “maybe” can be born deaf, blind or both!
I really hopen those idiots gets eye infections and have to “just get them plucked out”!
There seems to be alot of people that know a whole lot more than i do, so maybe i can get some good advice. i have a dog about 7 months old, we got him free from a lady that breeds blue heelers, any way we didnt know it when we got him but he is blind and deaf, i made a special collar for him that tugs by remote so we can take him outside with out him taking off, since we cant call him, but my vet really hasnt told me much about his condition and he just started recently chewing his fur off the vet said to use benidril and that should help, but i am concerned that this may be a mental disorder, i dont know what to do. he is a happy playful dog, and as long as we dont move furniture around the house he rarely runs into things. he is smart and loves attention, in all other espects a normal dog. any advice?
I own a DM Dane (deaf with vision issues) and I work at an animal sanctuary. I can’t help but notice that no one here is treating these dogs as sentient creatures but rather as a hobby or a business.
I see too many puredbred dogs go through our doors to look at breeding for profit or worse entertainment, as anything but unethical in most cases. No wonder so many of you are concerned about the AR!
If you really feel the need to practice eugenics as a hobby, please choose to play with roses.
I do have a question and I hope you don’t mind if I sound un-informed. Can you cross a blue merle and a sable merle or is that also considered an unhealthy cross? I truly do not understand the breeding practices of people who KNOW better and it makes me so sad that they have absolutely no regard for the health of their babies. Thank you so much 😀
Sincerely,
Michele
You can not cross any merle with any other merle and be safe. Blue x Red x Sable or anything else.
The only possible exception to this is that in the Catahoula breed there appears to be a DIFFERENT version of the merle gene, perhaps two. I haven’t seen a paper that clarifies this perfectly, so take this as working theory. There appears to be a “cryptic” version of merle that results in low expression of the spotting. This also appears to lead to low risks as the bleaching is what hurts the vision and hearing. If there are few spots, there is a low chance that they occur in the organs that they can damage. It appears that this mutation on merle can be paired with the “normal” merle and not result in a bleached-out-blind-deaf-sort-of-mess. Or even doubled up with itself. It’s unclear because there are a lot of other spotting genes in play and there hasn’t really been great scientific papers since the era of cheap gene sequencing that have identified what’s really going on.
Another problem with Sable + Merle is that the sable coloring can mask the merle and make it hard to tell if the puppy HAS merle and so you can get an unintentional sable merle x merle breeding if you didn’t know that the first dog was sable merle and not just sable.
So be careful out there.
Thank you very much for your informed reply and for not criticizing my ignorance on the subject.
Sincerely,
Michele
I was google searching double Merle puppies knowing what possible genetic defects they have. Not to buy one for my own but just to see what they actually look like because in the several years I’ve been around them I’ve never had a chance to see there colors.
The link that brought me to this page was actually a picture advertising double Merle breeding and I only clicked on it to go to the website because of how absolutely furious I was to see that people actually advertise what I consider to be Animal cruelty knowing the low survival rate of double Merle puppies let alone the even lower number of double Merle’s that make it out without birth defects that could have been avoided.
Needless to say I was relieved to see that I got sent to this site shaming the breeding of double merles. It helps me keep hope that if enough people speak out against dangerous breeding such as this that we can slowly but surely stop these neglectful breeders that are only worried about money.
It looks like double merle border collies are a thing now too. I was upset to see these pups for sale in my area. http://centralny.ebayclassifieds.com/dogs-puppies/port-crane/akc-border-collie-pups-merle/?ad=41986820
This makes me sick that some Border Collies breeders have not learned from the mistakes of other pastoral breeds. The merle gene is a somatic mutation. Somatic mutation in utero can lead to birth defects with the impaired cell passing on to the damaged DNA and its descendants causing malformation.
Do you have a contact number for Diane other then what is on her Facebook page and website?
In recent years the demand and subsequent breeding for Merle’s made my search for sables difficult. Now, fear of foul breeders, the abuse of double Merle breeding has me dismayed, confused, wary and frustrated just trying to bring my favorite dog into my home. I don’t know who trust. Buying a dog should be a fun thing. Shaking my head.😆
I’ve come to the same conclusion with Boston Terriers. Strictly on the basis of conformation, which is in my opinion, the raison d’etre for the breed. They have screwed up BT’s with weird colors and if that’s not bad enough, Staffordshire Terrier – shaped heads. Ugh! Why? Moronic people with too much money jangling around in their pockets. And money-hungry breeders, equally ignorant, but’ll do anything to make a buck while sitting around eating Fritos and qualifying for an EBT card. BT puppies look like little piglets for 12 weeks or more and getting a BT puppy today you have no idea what it will look like at 5 or 6 months of age because of this “fad” breeding. Stupid people breeding dogs and dopes buying those dogs has ruined many breeds. There is no getting around that.
Eileen I fully understand your frustration. As a breeder that does not want double merles crossing again in our mating and sure don’t want even the second or third generation back. It has become like looking for a needle in a haystack. Yes, it should be a fun thing and so such mating to produce healthy strong puppies with goodte eye sight hearing and immune system. You can do all the DNA testing available but nothing replaces a breeder with acceptance that regardless of what old timers did ….and those that win ..win in the ring this is not Better Bred Dogs.
Holy crap. Whoever wrote this is really an ass. Have you ever hear of cryptic? You obviously do not understand genetic which is apparent in you diatribe. I have yet to know one person who has ever purposefully bred merle to merle, but I have seen many times, a breeder who bred a cryptic merle to a cryptic merle. Before genetic testing, it was IMPOSSIBLE to tell a cryptic merle. They appear Tri or sable. Fully. In England, they don’t even consider merles Collies. Get clue and shut up with your ignorance. You are not providing info, you are killing dogs and people lives. Asshole.