I’m not a toy breed person, so this debate entirely slipped under my radar.
It turns out that concerns over health have led several registries, including the Kennel Club, the Canadian Kennel Club, and the Australian National Kennel Club, to disqualify the merle coloration in Chihuahuas. Not only that, but the KC has new regulations that prevent any Chihuahua that is either merle or from merle parents from being registered. FCI countries are trying to breed out any merle genes in Chihuahua.
Health issues were a major reason for this change in these breed club standards. Merle in Chihuahuas is very closely associated with deafness, so it could be a major victory for breed health.
However, some breeders have always contended that merle Chihuahuas weren’t purebred, so that may have had something to do with the ban on merles. After all, Dachshunds come in long and smooth-haired varieties, and they carry the gene for merle (called “dapple” in Dachshunds). The theory goes that these dogs had falsified pedigree and were derived from crossbreeds.
Dapple in Dachshunds is a dominant gene, and the Chihuahua merle gene is also dominant. In Dachshunds, dapples cannot be bred to dapples, because it will produce “double dapples,” which are known to have several defects.
Now, it could be that the Chihuahua people don’t want these defects, so they banned merle. It also could be that they wanted to ban a coloration in the breed that supposedly came about through crossbreeding.
Now, the AKC and its parent club for the Chihuahua refuse to ban merles. Thus, the AKC and its parent club are out of step with most of the world. That has caused a worldwide civil war among Chihuahua fanciers.
And there are strident merle Chihuahua fanciers. On their sites, they blame the “BBC” and “UK vets” (probably in this documentary) and claim that no merle Chihuahua has ever been found to be deaf.
I have no dog in this fight.
So I really don’t know whether merle in Chihuahuas is really connected to deafness or not.
My guess is part of this movement to ban merle Chihuahuas has less to do with health and whole lot more to do with the possiblity that these merle Chihuahuas are part dachshund.
Blood purity matters a lot to these people.
If this had truly been a health revision, I think they would have gotten rid of the apple head requirement and strictly banned moleras.
So there may be a health victory in the banning of merle Chihuahuas and their progeny. Or it may be more jockying around with eugenics and blood purity– this time using health as the front to ban a color that may have arisen from crossbreeding.
Boy, times have changed. Remember, golden retriever people had to make up a story about their Russian origins to get their breed split off the flat-coat! Now, they are using health. Maybe the health issues are justified, or maybe it’s just the same old wine in a different bottle.
My guess is we’ll see a lot more of this in the years to come.
For the record, I think merle should be banned in Chihuahuas, just as double dapple is banned in Dachshunds. But the Chihuahua standard needs several revisions.
And color is but one of them. The extreme small size and large, rather unnatural head are two things that should be reformed. I would think those would take precedence over the extreme minority of Chihuahuas that are merle.
It’s a fascinating debate. People dredge up blurry black and white photos of ancient Chihuahuas and argue over whether it has Merle markings or not! Apparently, one of the dowager’s of the breed made an offhand comment years ago about how she once owned a Merle Chihuahua as a young woman — and gets accused of senility by the anti-Merles, because “That’s imposssible”.
Like you, I have no stake in the fight, but it’s pretty fun to spectate. =)
This will not be the last of these sorts of fights.
It’s certainly not the first (see the fight between the Japanese Akita breeders and the Great Japanese dog breeders– that’s one of my faves!)
But it’s the first one (that I know of) in which science and health issues actually were used to get rid of a color.
Now, for the extreme minority of Chis that are merle, this is an issue. However, if I were really concerned about health, I’d worry about the extreme small size, the moleras, and the head shape first– then I’d worry about all the things that happen with dominant merles.
Shouldn’t this be really easy to prove statistically? The whole point to the registries is to keep accurate genealogical records; why can’t they just pull the records, enter it into a database and compare the frequency of specific health issues against the incidence of merle coats?
Really, that’s almost asking too much of dog people. After all, they would rather bask in the romantic and often false histories of their breeds. Too many don’t have any interest in these situations.
Further, a lot of unhealthy pups were culled, and the culling was never recorded. So even if we had that data, it would probably under count the problem.
We know that double-dappled dachshunds have lots of problems:
“So, What’s Wrong with a Double Dapple?
For reasons unknown, the combination of two dapple genes hitting the same area of the dog can be lethal. I have seen double dapple puppies born with no eyes, and/or no ears. Blindness and/or deafness is also caused by the double dapple gene. On the other hand, a double dapple can be born with no deformities at all.”
http://www.dachshund.org/article_double_dapple.html
The gene is dominant merle (M), and if a dog gets two copies of the gene, it statistically much more likely to have no eyes, no ear canal, or even no anus (there might be a market for that dog for people who don’t want to house-train!)
And that’s the gene in the Chihuahua population, which some people believe actually came from the dachshund first. People breeding doxies to Chihuahuas and then forging the papers about their heritage. That happens more often than you think, and it was one of my early (as in when I was 9 years old) questions about the AKC. How can they “prove” that these dogs are what they say they are? They really can’t.
ALL double merles have the potential for such problems. That’s why it’s generally considered a no go to breed a merle to a merle, because it’s a breeding where statistically 25% of the pups will be defective. People still do it, though. The solution to the problem of double merles, is DON’T DO THAT BREEDING. Don’t breed a merle to a merle. The problems with double merles have been known for a long, long time, but one of the web pages the Chi people point to is the very sad story of a novice breeder who did, you guessed it, a merle to merle breeding, which produced defective pups.
You cannot confirm ancestry without DNA. Period. And it’s been long enough that there is no way AKC will invalidate all those breedings. Anything over three generations with no DNA and it’s kind of an ‘oh, well.’ And it’s not just shady people doing false papers. There is a well known desert bred Saluki that got registered by AKC back in the fifties (IIRC) by being registered along with a recently born litter. That was before it was possible to get desert bred dogs in. In some breeds it was common practice to crossbreed to bring in more coat, better head, whatever, and falsify the papers. Before the advent of shipping semen when bitches had to be shipped cross country, unscrupulous stud dog owners might breed the bitch to a completely different stud. How would the bitch owner know? Even now, there is no one checking to see if this dog and that bitch could actually produce that color of pups.
The real question is, if the dog looks an Antarctic Snooterhound, acts like an Antarctic Snooterhound, and produces pups that look and act like Antarctic Snooterhounds, why should it matter what’s back in the woodpile?
I’ve never had any breeds that could come in recessive merle.
Of course, the Chihuahua people could have placed rules about breeding merle to merle, but that would be too rational.
Does not matter if you put rules in place, or say we won’t register offspring resulting from a breeding that violates those rules, someone will do it, form their own breed and registry or just sell without papers.
Now, you can breed many breeds, and register them with various registries, in colors that disqualify in the ring, but the market for those dogs is not for show.
You can complain about other health problems in the breed and how trivial color is, but from experience, the Krazy Kolor breeders (stolen from Fugly!) are not exactly on the forefront of health testing for anything.
Not sure that I have ever heard of issues directly caused by moleras, but then again it’s not my breed. Moleras often do occur in hydrocephalic dogs, but in those cases the hydrocephalus causes the molera to remain open. I would imagine a large one would be of more concern than a small one. I would not tolerate any size in toy fox, they are way to game and prone to smacking their skulls on everything in hot pursuit, a hard head is a must.
Liver shunts, slipping patellas, tracheal collaps and heart disease are the things I worry about with toys in general and chis in particular.
In english bulldogs, the nose must be black if you want to show. Liver is considered dudley and a specific disqualification. That goes back to a big bruhaha in the late 1800s. Solid black is considered “highly undesirable” also the result of a big disagreement, but it does not disqualify.
We do get isabellas (self colored fawn dilutes) and blues. Some of these dogs do suffer the hair growth anomalies that can plague these dilutes, but not all. the fact that they can suffer from problems specific to the color is probably a good enough reason to keep the “nose must be black”.
As for black being “highly undesirable” well, I would rather see black added to the list of acceptable colors as last in preference rather than residing in limbo as accepted but with severe reservations as it now stands. But then there is no health issue associated with black.
There is no such thing as recessive merle. There is, however, merle which is effectively hidden by phaeomelanin based colors (red/sable/yellow family)
Well, I’ve never had anyone answer this.
I had relatives who had a solid black Aussie.
He bred to their red golden retriever.
11 puppies were born.
2 were black.
9 were gold with black merle patches.
Goldens don’t carry merle at all. And that’s phaeomelanin color. The black dog was out of a merle bitch and another solid black dog. So I have no idea where this color came from.
And it’s not the golden retriever black spot issue:
They carry a somatic mutation that produces something like merle, but only one side of the body will be affected. It’s not genetic, because it’s a somatic mutation. If you breed a golden with these black spots, it most likely will have normal solid yellow conformation.
And in that case, the majority of puppies in the litter wouldn’t have that exact same somatic mutation.
Nobody around here would ever breed a merle collie or herding dog, except an Aussie. I’ve never seen a blue merle collie or border collie.
I’m very unfamiliar with merle. I don’t know if it even exists in any gundog breed. We’re all about the same three colors: liver, red to yellow, and black, and all of those with dilution and with white, including ticking and roaning. We have brindle in retrievers, but we’ve done all we can to breed that out.
Might have been a cryptic merle.
In a golden?
Goldens don’t carry merle.
Perhaps it’s the same genetics at work as here?
http://www.louisianasportsman.com/classifieds.php?&sec=classifieds&act=full&adID=82766&term=CATAHOULA
I don’t understand merle either. If it’s recessive, how did it show up in a 50 percent Lab cross?
It’s incomplete dominant.
I believe White GSDs were also disqualified by the breed club sometime in the 50s or so because of the perceived health issues of being white (Even though one of their founding sires was white). The white-fanciers split off and renamed their dogs the ‘Swiss Shepherd’.
But yeah, it was because white was seen as the ‘deafness color’, even though we now know it’s not that simple.
For one thing, I don’t know if that is exactly true about white GSD’s.
They are the e/e’s (extremely diluted yellows– exact same color as a golden retriever), not true whites. e/e has never been associated with deafness.
I think they banned them because in GSD’s that color is associated with bad temperaments. It’s also a recessive, and there was some inbreeding make the “white” lines.
I didn’t know that there were white GSD’s in the founder population.
Boxers, though, are well-known to have white dogs at their base. And these are true whites, which are associated with deafness. I believe a solid white bulldog was used as an outcross, and Meta von der Passage, one of the foundation bitches, is almost entirely white. https://retrieverman.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/meta-von-der-passage.jpg
George — Yeah, you’d wonder about that, wouldn’t you? Perhaps the data doesn’t actually support the witch hunt. If only you could get breed clubs this up in arms about things like MVD and such!
George, most registries don’t keep that sort of information. You do get some types of health checks on the pedigree (akc will include ofa data, etc.) but nothing like deafness, eye problems, longevity and the like. Breeders also do not always register pups with accurate colors (see merle in Cockers, where it is often registered as roan. I have a Saluki bitch that is registered as black and tan, and she is not, she’s grizzle.) Individual breeders must be trusted to give accurate information about their lines. The problem with merle is that there are plenty of other breeds that have the gene with no debilitating health issues except those associated with double merles. I believe that the Corgi club actually forbids breeding breeding merle to merle. I think retrieverman hits it on the head when he says this particular controversy is more about the possibility of impure breeding than health issues. You see the same thing in debates about brindle in Salukis, or particolor in azawakh.
The thing that I find most amusing is the breeders that worry incessantly about inbreeding coefficients, health testing, MHC, etc. but if you mention crossbreeding OMG THE APOCALYPSE WE’LL ALL GO STRAIGHT TO HELL AND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO BREED TYPE!!!!!
Heilige Doppelgaenger!
We know merle is associated with deafness in Collies and other breeds. The problem is that what one person perceives as beauty is more often than not a genetic screw up or for want of a better term “the kiss of death” to that dog.
So, why don’t these breeders get it? Because this is “their” breed and they will breed and breed without conscience, until they get their come-uppance. They will seek out every justification for these genetic freaks. We know there are many breeders who lie through their teeth about the health of their dogs.
These are the same people who balk at taking back a genetically sick animal, which they should never have sold, and somehow skillfully manage to resell said animal to a more gullible buyer.
The buyer should be forewarned no matter the breed, but those cute puppies seal the deal everytime.
http://www.apbtconformation.com/merle.htm
Well, I do know that crossing Pit Bulls and American bulldogs with Catahoula Curs is a very common occurrence.
They even call them Catahoula bulldogs: http://www.bulldoginformation.com/catahoula-bulldog.html
There is also merle bulldog from Georgia (a regional dog):
http://www.bulldogbreeds.com/alapahabluebloodbulldog.html
I know that homozygous dominant merle can be a bad thing.
However, I’m not opposed to people breeding Catahoulas to bulldog-types to create catch dogs. But if they are breeding merle to merle, their dogs should never be registered.
Maybe we need a law that says–you can’t breed merle to merle in dogs or it’s animal cruelty!
Most people with merle breeds refer to the lighter color on an Mm dog as the merling, not the darker patches of the base color. A blue merle is genetically a black dog whose black coloring has been diluted by the M gene.
It is slightly possible that the sire of the aussie-golden crosses was a phantom merle where the visible merling is very small. In some cases, the only visible merling may be removed when the tail is docked. It’s uncommon but far from unheard of in Aussies. From the little I’ve read of the Aussie black gene and Golden’s color genes, I don’t think that’s what gave the black & gold coloring.
And I think it’s “interesting” that these merle Chihuahuas and Pomeranians showed up around the time “toy” Aussies did and often in the same kennels. Purely coincidence, I’m sure.
90 percent or more of goldens are black dogs with phaelomelanin. The sometimes have somatic mutations that look like the black patches on a merle, but they are on only one side of the dog. It cannot be inherited.
I have no idea what caused this. The Aussie was the first solid black one I’d ever seen.
But these puppies were gold with what looked like black patches on a merle.
I’m so glad this isn’t a normal gundog color, because it would drive us insane trying to keep it out of the bloodlines.
the apparently black aussie could’ve been a cryptic or phantom merle. in these dogs the merling (the lighter, or dilute, color)is extremely limited (like maybe one small patch). on an aussie, if the only visible merling is on the tail it may be lost when the tail is docked.
He was docked.
His mother was quite possibly the ugliest merle dog I’ve ever seen. She was blue merle but had no white and no tan on her at all. The blotches are in weird places.
I was wrong when I said that his father was black. He was tricolor.
Jess wrote, “The real question is, if the dog looks an Antarctic Snooterhound, acts like an Antarctic Snooterhound, and produces pups that look and act like Antarctic Snooterhounds, why should it matter what’s back in the woodpile?”
Well, I don’t like where the “woodpile” term comes from, but I’m going to go with it out of convenience. Here are some reasons why it should matter that folks who breed intentionally know what’s in a pedigree:
The Antarctic Snooterhound may have problems it’s susceptible to that are being masked in this breeding by what’s in the woodpile–which might be a good thing, or it might lead one to believe what’s being masked is gone and lead to complacency in a breeding program. Or, the Antarctic Snooterhound may have a specialized set of behaviors that Snooterhound breeders may want to preserve, without the worry of the woodpile critter’s behaviors cropping up in a third or fourth generation. Or the Woodpile critter may be a carrier for something previously unheard of in the Snooterhound, and later a very loose linebreeding may double up and produce an affected Snooterhound–or worse, the recessive may proliferate in the Snooterhound undetected for generations, until it is unavoidable and multiple affecteds start cropping up and must be dealt with where formerly the breed was clean of the woodpile’s disorder.
Don’t get me wrong–if you own a dog free and clear and have no breeding rights you gave over in a purchase contract (limited registration, spay/neuter agreement), breed whatever you want to breed and good luck to you, I hope it’s sheer genius. I’m also not totally against the idea of opening up a registry in a very organized and deliberate way. But Snooterhound breeders should know when non-SH’s are in a pedigree so that they can make informed breeding decisions of their own.
The point of “breeds” is predictability–it’s not fair to play with the predictability without making everyone aware of it.
I have a male dog who is homozygous for brindle marking. The brindle marking is dominant. In 8 years, he has never produced a non-brindle puppy except a few in which the color was masked by virtue of the pups being solid white.
There have been a few who had very minimal brindling however.
.
Three years ago in a litter of brindle puppies there was a fawn male with NO brindling, anywhere. The people are very reliable, the mother lived at my home throughout her entire fertile period, I KNOW she was only bred to one male.
The puppy did turn out to be to be healthy and attractive, was bred once to a red female. If he had not inherited a brindle gene, the litter would have been red/fawn. The females first litter had been all fawn out of a fawn male.
5 of 7 puppies were brindle. He was a brindle in which the genetic which minimize brindling completely masked it’s expression. A cryptic or occult brindle.
Was the dog e/e? e/e dogs cannot make black pigment in the hair, so the brindle doesn’t show. I’ve seen this in both Afghans and Salukis. It’s like, ‘surprise!’
The golden was an e/e– as they all are.
They do have black skin pigment, as this one did. She was a BB.
The boxer was a very dark “reverse brindle.”
I suppose those sighthonds only breeds where you’d get this on a regular basis.
Brindle exists in very limited numbers in Chesapeakes and Labradors (because they all descend from a touch of Cao de Castro Laboreiro).
Most of the golden boxers I’ve seen are from fawn boxer to golden pairings, which results in either fawn boxer looking pups or some brindles. Whenever there is a brindle boxer of any sort in the pairing, you’ll get black or black with bronze shading. This is actually getting to be something of a common designer crossbreed, even though they aren’t that much healthier than either purebred (in my experience). All the boxers and goldens do is introduce their specific cancer genes into the mix.
whoops, sorry for the double post
No problem. I got it.
That exact same thing happens in boxers! There are phantom brindles that sometimes pop up. Some people think they have fawns, and then get all brindle puppies in a litter, just like that.
All “black boxers,” which are now being sold at very high prices, are actually “sealed brindles.” That’s a very common color in Boston terriers, too.
I don’t know if you’ve seen post on my late “golden boxer,” but she was almost solid black. I think she was actually a sealed brindle, because her sire was a “reverse brindle” boxer.
In the summer months, she would develop that “bronze” shading, which led more than a few people to ask about my “chocolate Lab.”
Her only golden retriever characteristics were her very good nature– terrible watchdog– and her wavy coat. She was also more barrel-shaped than a boxer, because her mother was a show-type golden. She swam terribly and didn’t know what the word retrieve meant. She did kill skunks, though. If I hated skunks, she would’ve been an excellent skunk dog.
She died of osteosarcoma last year at the age of 11.
MERLE IS EVIL! We have been showing AKC Chihuahua’s for almost a decade. In the first years, we paid big money for two Chihuahua’s…with the greeder swearing there wasn’t any merle involved. What arrived was two merle Chi’s. One is deaf…that the greeder swore was from the airplane ride and the other is so sickly with allergies, skin problems, etc,. We have to watch him suffer everyday as we have not been able to help him. Not to mention one grew out to be over 20 pounds and the other (deaf) grew out to be 9.
SIDE NOTE: On our dogs, it is hard to tell that they are merle…you can see the ticking on the legs and on the skin when you wash them. There is a faint pattern, if you look hard on one. They looked normal in all the photos we received. They do not have loud merle coloring/pattern.
We are very upset with the Chihuahua Club of America and the AKC over the choice to let merles stay. This is a real issue that the merle greeders with fight to the death on… literally (the dogs they are bringing in this world). What is sad, is that we voted against the merle in the CCA, while the majority voted for it. These people are suppose to be protecting, preserving and bettering the breed! It is strange that the USA is so far behind Canada and the UK.
We know the merle health issues are true, we have to live it everyday. We have to use sign language and watch our other dog suffer every second of the day. Merle is a fatal gene…whether it be from genetic problems…or dogs ending up in the shelters, due to being deaf or having too many medical problems to pay for.
As for the massive extreme heads, we agree with you on that issue also. There are tons of problems associated with that too…so many to go into.
Educating the public is all we can do. Our votes in the CCA did not matter…as there are more greeders than ethical breeders in there.
I’m with you on this. I have no idea why the AKC and CCA are so clueless on this.
I don’t think merle should exist in chihuahuas, simply because I don’t think the merle breeders have the best interest of the dogs in mind.
Merle in Australian shepherds, BC’s, shelties, and rough collies is very carefully bred. No one breeds merle to merle. And those who do are morons. In dachshunds, double dapples are a major no-no.
You could have merle in Chis, if those breeders were more careful, but they just seem to want to produce tons of merle pups for no good reason.
And because of that, they shouldn’t be breeding merle. I don’t care where the merle came from. These people can’t be responsible with it.
Your are aware that there are breeders in Collies and Shelties who do merle x merle breedings? Show breeders? So called reputable breeders? Should merle be DQed in those breed because a few people will do a breeding that will produce defective pups?
Going by your logic, I don’t think people should be allowed to breed Afghan hounds for show. They have too much coat, it’s not functional and it’s not comfortable for the dogs. They obviously don’t have the best interests of the dogs at heart. Maybe we should DQ excessive coat in Afghans.
I’m aware that they do breed double merles. However, it’s not an acceptable practice. I think that breeding double merles should be consider animal cruelty.
Merle is an historical color for certain herding breeds, and I don’t think you can just ban it. After all, Australian shepherds are derived from a German herding breed, which is now considered a Huetehunde, called a “Tiger dog.”
Afghan hounds, I don’t know, but these show dogs don’t look like any canine from Baluchistan.
Wow, you all sound very professional! I’m only a guy who likes dogs (‘n’ cats ‘n’ other critters); likes finding out about breeds – mostly because they’re just such delightful precious souls in interesting and often charming specialized packaging. But I find show animals increasingly disturbing. I ain’t that old, and I’ve seen the show winners grow different and stranger in my lifetime. Go to my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, and those who paid attention to such things then (my mom, for instance, has early 1960s AKC THE COMPLETE DOG BOOK and NatGeo’s MAN’S BEST FRIEND – breed standards and UNmention of problems specific to them not commendible, but see the “exemplar” pictures, and only the squish-noses and the ultra-shortlegs really look impractical as dawgs. Only the Poodle has fantasy-hair [with wolflike carriage underneath], the AKC’s Puli is uncorded and looks something like an unshorn terrier, all the spaniels look like they could work a field, and champ Chihuahuas are sturdy and cobby); you’ll find agreement: “Hell, YES, they’ve changed!”
I know that some pan-breed registries/clubs have finally begun to care more about the living, feeling animal-persons packaged in the breeds than the conceits of afficionados of mutant-modelling (the KC got a good shove with the documentary PEDIGREE BREEDS EXPOSED, which all should see), but I wonder if there’s any registry which puts the health and comfort of the breeds as THE priority… Which might mean facing up to the End of Certain Breeds As We Know Them: No-tails, stubtails and ridgebacks, as well as true albinos and merles probably should be eliminated from breeding. Anything that can’t give birth or safely get up and down from the couch, or EAT, by itself should definitely not be allowed to breed; ditto anything that just can’t run around and romp like a natural animal without risking life and limb (R.I.P. Uga VII!). “CULLING”, BTW, properly means “choosing” -not “killing”, although animals in or facing certain agony, like the Cavaliers whose brains grow too big for their skulls, in all decency need to be euthanized. When we love ourselves, we love our own well-being. Even with the increasing grotesqueries of fashion, most of us still recognize that forcing others to have needless,painful, crippling “body modification” is outrageous. Perpetuating deformed and hereditarily sick breeds is a type of Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy; DAMNABLE.
[…] is about chis, but still interesting. Worldwide Civil War Among Chihuahua Fanciers! Retrieverman's Weblog […]
Just to necro this post, recently the Pomeranian Club decided, against the wishes of the majority of the club members, to allow merles as a color in their breed as well. Makes you wonder what kind of people are running some of these clubs, and why people are expected to respect them ‘just because’ they’re an AKC club.
http://www.thedogpress.com/ClubNews/Tail-Wags-Dog-10091_Coats.asp
I’m glad the DPCA is holding the line against albinism in the Dobermann.
Be interesting to see if they issue any proclamations about DCM now that there’s a dna test for it. It’s a dominant gene.