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I suppose you could get this color in dachshunds and Great Danes (German mastiffs), too. However, both would be faulty.
Despite what the original dachshund breeders attempted to produce in their breed, the current dachshund standard doesn’t allow lots of colors. Great Danes can’t be any recognized color of merle, although the harlequin color is a kind of merle, just with black and white only.
Merle or (dapple) can be a bad color, because it can lead to deafness.
Not all merles are bad, but breeding merle to merle for generations is not a wise strategy.
Brindle is one of those colors I associate with dogs, especially sight hounds and mastiffs. However, it also occurs in border collies, the aforementioned breed of corgi, and it is a faulty color in retrievers. Dachshunds can be brindle, and for some reason, I associate this with long-haired ones.
In fact, brindle is such a common color that I can’t list all the breeds that come in with this coloration.
But merle and brindle in the same dog– that’s something unique.
I have to admit, when I found out that horses come in brindle too, I was amazed. I’d always thought it was only a ‘dog color’.
It comes in cattle, too.
The brindle found in horses can be a result of a chimeric individual. See http://www.whitehorseproductions.com/ecg_basics4.html for a brief discussion (at the bottom is a link to an article from the American Quarter Horse Association which has since been taken down. That’s quite a shame, because it was a fascinating article.
Here’s a link to the google cache of the AQHA article. It may not stay long, but it’s worth the read…
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:PzlCj02iszIJ:www.aqha.com/magazines/aqhj/content/06february/oneinamillion.pdf+chimeric+horse+%22one+in+a+million%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
A couple of years ago I had a foster mutt that was white with brindle and blue merle spots. Not sure what she was. If I had to guess I’d have said whippet x american eskimo.
Actually, breeding merle to merle ONCE is a big problem.
The merle gene is a simple dominant. If a dog is heterozygous for merling (Mm), he will show the merle color pattern. If he is homozygous for merling (MM) — as will occur in about one-quarter of the offspring from a merle to merle mating — he will likely have a lot of white in his coat. Unfortunately, he is also at very high risk of being stone deaf, blind, or both. He may even be born eyeless.
In breeds where merle occurs, it is usually a simple matter to just never breed merle to merle. Some people do it anyway, because they are either pig-ignorant or fixated on show wins and puppy sales of “flashy” merle pups.
In ACK show collies, there is the danger of a “sable merle” going undetected, as the pattern can be hard to see sometimes. Then there can be an inadvertent merle to merle breeding. I don’t know if anything similar happens in other breeds that have the merle gene.
I cannot see the brindling on the small photo of this dog.
I have another photo of the same dog. From what I’ve seen, the brindling isn’t very distinct at all. This is actually a disqualifying color. I think the color refers to the genotype, which results from crossing a blue merle with a brindle (brindle is a common cardigan corgi color).
One of the most interesting dogs I’ve seen belonged to a relative of mine. He had gold merle dog that was out of a golden retriever and an Australian shepherd. The dog was the gold color of the retriever with the black splashes of the merle. It was not a black spot phenomenon golden. It was an actual golden merle. It looked like a slightly stockier Australian shepherd.
Brindle merle Cardis are also sometimes called ginger or peach merles for the color. :) They’re interesting looking, but since the breed has been relatively well protected from BYBs, they tend to be very unusual- MOST breeders of the breed ascribe to one of the various club code of ethics, all of which prohibit breeding blue to the various red-based colors (red, brindle and sable) in the breed. (IE, you can breed merles only to tricolors or tricolors with brindle points.)
I have a few photos of various brindle merle Cardis on one of my backup drives somewhere. It’s less of an issue in Cardis than in collies (sable is also a red-based color) because while brindle IS the most common color in Cardis, it doesn’t dominate numerically the way sable does in collies.
Cait (who has three tricolor collies, a tricolor cardi, and still co-owns brindle and merle Cardis)
Mittelspitz? As in the dog that is in between the larger German spitz and the Pomeranian?
Yup. :) (I have three blogs, one of which is the training blog for my german spitz (mittel), who is in training for agility and obedience when I am not busy preventing her evil plots to take over the world (or at least tne neighbors’ chicken coop which is currently filled with munchy-sized nuggets, I mean chicks.)
I know I’m coming in very late on this thread, but since I bred Great Danes and now am involved in Cardigans it may be a good time to show up :).
Great Danes CAN be merle. Lots and lots of them are. Merle is not an accepted color for the show ring, but you can register them and, if they are high-quality, they are sometimes bred. Because fawns and brindles have been used in harlequin/mantle pedigrees, I’ve seen many fawn merles, brindle merles, fawn harlequins, blue harlequins, etc. Just because they don’t make it into the breed books or the first page of a google image search doesn’t mean there aren’t a whole bunch of them out there. And most breeders, in my experience, just place them as pets with a kiss on the nose as they go.
Cardigans in the US have a very mixed history in terms of what breedings are allowed under the parent club’s code of ethics. For some years any color breeding was allowed, and for a long time you could breed merle to merle. Only recently did the COE change to force you to breed merles only to black (tri) dogs. Personally, I think it’s a very foolish rule. It forces an already small gene pool to fragment and effectively isolates the merle-black color family from the others. The benefit to the breed of allowing merles to be bred to any color would far outweigh the risk of having a couple of puppies in a litter that you have to put in pet homes because they were the wrong color.
Oh, and the only color that merle doesn’t show up on is the “ee” yellow/red, like a yellow Lab or a Golden. It can be hidden by hair growth on the sables (which are called reds, fawns, and a bunch of other colors, depending on breed) as the puppy matures, but any breeder worth her salt can see the merleing clearly on the newborn coat, can see the pigment on the nose, can see the color in the eyes. The “accidental” merle to merle breeding scenario, which is often used to justify shutting off the merle gene pool from other colors, is a bogeyman that is based on fear, not reality. The only breeders who genuinely don’t know what color their dogs are are the types of breeders who are making far bigger mistakes and producing far worse dogs than just bad color.
If you want the actual story on merle to merle breedings, here it is: The breeders who choose to breed merles to merles do NOT do so because they are bad breeders or want more flashy puppies. Merle to merle breedings don’t produce any more merle puppies than merle to black breedings. There’s no superficial advantage to it; there’s certainly no money-making advantage to it. It’s not a simple choice–there are no simple choices in careful breeding. Those who breed merles together make the choice because they are trying to make the best possible pairing in terms of sound conformation, temperament, health, and (thankfully in this breed, often) working ability.
There are a whole ton of merle Cardigans out there, and very few outstanding blacks. When a breeder has a choice between an entire litter of mediocre dogs that are the “right” color and an outstanding litter that may have a few puppies who are the “wrong” color, I don’t think she should be penalized for making that decision.
Double-merle dogs are usually at least partially deaf. This is not a “health problem” in the way we usually talk about it; it’s a physical reality because the merle gene shuts down melanocytes, and melanocytes also make some structures in the dog’s inner ear. It cannot be passed on and it is not a sign of unsoundness elsewhere. The (thankfully few) whites that are generally born in merle to merle litters are carefully evaluated as they mature. If the puppy is only deaf, there’s a very good chance he can be placed carefully in a good home. The VERY FEW (I know of only perhaps a dozen among hundreds of puppies in all the Dane, Collie, and Cardi litters I’ve watched over the last ten years) who are born with microopthalmia or vision issues are euthanized.
In an ideal world, none of us–Cardigan breeders, Collie breeders, Danes, Catahoulas, Aussies, etc.– would ever breed merles to merles. But that ideal world requires a large and diverse group of suitable black mates for our merle dogs, and that just doesn’t exist. And I would rather see a breeder going for a litter with maximum soundness and longevity and working ability, even at the expense of a puppy, than a breeder choosing the “correct” color match-up and putting eight unsound puppies, or eight inbred puppies, or eight stupid puppies, out there.
In goldens, we have a somatic mutation, which means it’s not inherited, that causes merle-type spots.
It normally causes tongue spots and black specks on the muzzle. However, I’ve seen goldens that looked merle from this somatic mutation.
It sometimes affects only one side of the dog, so a you have a normal golden on the right side and a merlish golden on the left.
If you breed from one of theses dogs, the puppies will not inherit it.
We are getting ready to adopt a dachshund puppy believed to be a double dapple. he has micro-opthalmia and very little vision as a result. A real little go getter though. You know if we the public were not willing to pay big money for unusual colored dogs maybe there would be fewer irresponsible breeders.
We need to get people much more informed about breeding merle or dapple to merle or dapple.
But I still find people who deny the reality.
I have a brindle merle and will be breeding her in a few years. The odds are half will be brindle merle.