Merle

My 2 1/2 year old dog Mase and his 10 month old son Stitch

 

They are great looking dogs (:

 

they look good...

 

Hello Kingof2Titans and Welcome. We are glad you joined this community.
Here we strive to maintain the preservation of the breed and to aid in the fight against BSL. We hope you will read the Forum rules before posting.
There is a ton of knowledge on this site so please use the search feature and look at what we have to offer. If you have a question, please ask.
Again, we welcome you to Game-Dog and we hope you enjoy your stay with us.

chinasmom

 

Welcome!

Hope will like it here.

All the best

 

Welcome. No disrespect intended, but are you purposely breeding merle dogs?

 

glad somebody asked before me

 

none taken! My oldest (mase) hes the dark one of the two, both of his parents are registered with the NAPDR. And when mase had a litter 5 of the nine pups came out Merle. Ive tracked the bloodline back 6 generations the Merle color came out in the fourth gen. Thanks for asking, you should become more educated about them.
http://www.adbadog.com/p_pdetails.asp?fspid=47

 

isnt merle associated with several defects ....blindness,deafness,etc.? if so, why would you breed your dogs?

 

i never stated i was Breeding them! White dogs and other spotted dogs can have the same issues.

I didn't know I would have to prove myself by joining this forum...

 

maybe he doesn't care too. I don't have much faith in much the ADBA prints these days. They are changing things around so they can register more animals and collect the funds from that. I think they look cool good luck with them.

 

here is another pic of him

 

I like that color, it's very unique. I don't know much about the health issues or anything like that regarding the merle color but then again I never had one or even seen one in person. I also could care less what color a dog is, can they work? Welcome to the site by the way.:cool:

 

http://www.adbadog.com/p_pdetails.asp?fspid=73&pg=73
http://www.dogbreedinfo.com/catahoulabulldog.htm

More educated about them?
What is there to be educated about?
Educated about the fact that despite the various songs, dances and depths of denials, dogs with "merle" on the papers aren't being registered by most registries with any credibility any more.
Despite what the ADBA says about the colore having existed in the breed, I've never seen a picture of a purebred merle Bulldog dated before late 1990something. I don't know of anyone else that has either.
Fourth, fourteenth, fortieth generation, it does not matter...it would appear to be a Catahoula in there somewhere. Sorry.
If you aren't breeding them on purpose, I'm sure you have an excellent reason for why poppa wasn't neutered before there were two generations of cattle dog mix masquerading as pit bull on your yard. And like I said, no disrespect intended; I just call it as I, and those with a functioning logic skills, see it.

 

Kingof2Titans - Welcome! I hope you have fun here. But we forewarned: there are many here who do not like merle dogs & will rip you & your dogs sideways. So be prepared. Do you have a pedigree you'd like to share? I'd love to see how they are bred. PM if you need to.

woody - Merle in it's homozygous form (this is where both parents are merle) is indeed associated with defects like blindness & deafness among others & as a result, breeding merle x merle is considered a big a BIG no-no in almost all breeds who carry the merle pattern. Homozygous merles are also called pure merles, double merles, dirty merles & sometimes they go under the misnomer lethal whites. Because of the defects that are associated with double (homozygous) merles, they should be avoided at all costs, as should any of their offspring or any bloodline that contains them. A bloodline that contains merle x merle breeding anywhere in it is called a "dirty" line & should be avoided.

Merle in it's heterozygous form (this is where one parent is merle & one is not) on the other hand is no more prone to defects than other "traditional" colors such as white, red, black, blue or blue fawn.

Hope this helps.

HighCostHiker: Then what would you have said to the great Howard Heinzl who openly said BLACK was NOT a bulldog color? Or what about when the ADBA was on the verge of banning black & tans b/c at one time they thought THAT was not a bulldog color? And what about all the people TODAY who say blue is not a bulldog color? The fact is, all people have their opinions on varying subjects, to include merle. Some say yay, some say nay, but neither side can PROVE anything.

As for fourth, fourteenth or fourtieth, you'd best me mindful of that. If you know your APBT history, you'd know there is NO bulldog ped out there that doesn't have some hung papers in it somewhere (to include yours) & if you go back far enough, in most cases doesn't have cross breeding in it somewhere. Ouch! Better check yourself before you go jumping on someone else! lol.

(Get ready for it Kof2T. Here it comes. The hater wave is about to hit!)

 

So then what is your guys input on blues? Fawns?

Who knew that with joining a forum you had to make sure your dog was 100% pit?

Everybody knows what we now call "APBT" was bred from Staffordshire Terriers (the name coming from the place in England where they were bred), they came on boats from Irish and English immigrants back in the 1900s. For a long time they were looked down upon as the poor mans' dog. Everybody knows that were bred dog fighting and bull baiting, but after legislation was passed they started breeding them with American terriers for different purposes (vermine control, guard dogs, ect.) *Technically no dog is "pure", no matter how close to a bloodline you try to keep a dog, the fundamental is that they are companions!
The act of 1976 was passed that no longer allowed pits to travel passed state lines for dog fighting, WHICH further diluted the breed and its standards.

Apperantly a lot of you on this post bought or by whatever other means have Pitbulls for SHOW OFF

...pitty

 

Btw ANY dog with 2 different coloured eyes, 80% white or more, and spots/ patches over the eyes or ears is at risk of going deaf or blind!

 

ughoohh I think you might have opened a can of worms I gonna stay out of this one I will be reading though

 

Queen, I hate to break it to you, but you are way off there. The bull & terrier fighting dogs were indeed imported into the US by immigrants. But the bull & terrier dog was created for one thing & one thing only - DOG FIGHTING. Not bull baiting (they had bulldogs for that) or ratting (they had terriers for that).

It was only after bull baiting was outlawed in the UK in 1835 (or so) that the bulldog men crossed their bulldogs with terriers to bring the size down & increase the gameness for use in dog fights. Please don't believe the PC hype. These dogs NEVER bred for bull baiting. A lot of folks who either don't know their history on the breed or are afraid to admit the history of the breed like to purport they were bred for bull baiting, but they weren't. Now CAN they be used as livestock dogs? Sure. But that was not their creation.

After the Staffordshire Bull Terriers & Irish Staffordshire Bull Terriers were imported to the US in the late 1800 - early 1900s, the breed was bred up in size & became known as the American Bull Terrier (the "Pit" came later). The American Bull Terrier was an over all dog - used as family pet by some, farm hand by others, but the majority of men still used these dogs for their original intent - the dog pit.

It was during these early years that the American Bull Terrier was crossed into several different breeds. There is an account of one man breeding in white English Bull Terrier. Another bred to a Boston Terrier mix. Bird dog was even added to the gene pool, albeit by accident.

And while you might be loathe to admit it, hunters in the rual south both today (& likely back then as well) crossed APBTs to the Catahoula Leopard Dog (CLD). They also crossed the CLD to the American Bulldog to create a breed called the Catahoula Bulldog (CatBull). These crossings of old could account for some of the unique colorations we see in the APBT today, to include blue ticks & red ticks (thanks to the bird dog) or the merles we both love.

Now NO ONE out there has hard evidence proving a cross out to obtain the merle coloration as of yet. There have been proven cases of purebred merle APBTs, as well as cases of questionably bred merles. But to belittle someone because they disagree with you will not help your cause. I have owned & bred merle APBTs for over a decade & I will tell you NO ONE knows where the color comes from. It's just as likely to have come into our breed from an internal cause as it is from an outside cause. There's proof for both. But to belittle someone because they disagree with you will not help your cause.


Hope this helps.

 

Nobody said you have to have a full blooded APBT to be a part of the forum,you don't even have to own a dog,LOL Since you mentioned blues,No the majority here don't like them.I personally HATE them.The blue breeding fad is probably the worst thing to happen to the APBT.Not really for sure what you meant by this statement "Apperantly a lot of you on this post bought or by whatever other means have Pitbulls for SHOW OFF" We have APBTs because we can and that's good enough for me. The act of 1976 could in no way dilute the APBT and cause it not to be pure,I don't see how you come up with that???