in poodles

The Merle Gene

The Merle Gene is a much-debated topic among Poodle Breeders.

To start off here is a little about the Merle Gene. The Merle Gene is an incomplete dominant gene, which means that it only requires one copy to reproduce it, so only one parent must carry for Merle. It is highly recommended against breeding Merle to Merle, (as in both parents carry one copy of the Merle gene), you will end up with 25% of the puppies being Double Merles, which have a chance of being blind and/or deaf. This does not apply to certain sine lengths, but to keep this simple I will never breed two Merle parents together. As a breeder, no matter what the percentage, I would never risk even one puppy being born blind and/or deaf, so we never breed Merle to Merle. As well, there are other color genes that can cover the Merle gene, so you will not visibly see it, but it is still present genetically and can be passed down to offspring. These colors include White, Cream, Apricot, Red, and heavily marked Parti's. As well, many that are not trained to Merles, can mistake a brindle with the Merle gene as not carrying Merle. If are breeding a Merle to any of these colors, you should genetically test them to ensure they do not carry for Merle and therefore, you will not have double Merle. 

There are many people out there that insist that Merle is not a naturally existing color in Poodles. Many of these people will claim that it is naturally occurring in many other breeds though, such as Australian Shepherd, Great Danes, and Dachshunds. So, we have a problem as nobody knows for 100% sure where the Merle gene comes from in Poodles. We do know with 100% certainty that there are AKC Registered Merle Poodles. There are several AKC Breeders that register them regularly. 

Many people also note that there is not a specific color called Merle when registering an AKC Poodle, so Merle must not be an AKC color. What I must note for all those people is the fact that there is also is no specific color for Parti, Sable, Brindle, or Phantom. These are noted as Black & White, Black & Tan, Black & Silver, Brown & Tan, etc. Merle is often noted as Black & Silver or Brown and Tan. 

So now the controversy is where did this gene come from and since nobody knows for sure we must look at our options.

1. The Merle gene was introduced using another breed, many, many generations ago. If for instance, we go with this option, we would assume that it was introduced with either Great Danes, Australian Shepherds, or Dachshunds. There are some other breeds with Merles, but they are just as different as these breeds in coat type, size, structure, and temperament, so we will just work with these breeds for now. If these breeds were used to introduce the Merle gene, we can all visibly see the obvious difference in coat type, structure, size, temperament among other things.

Let us discuss coat type first, there are three genes that affect coat type that we know of genetically:  KRT71 (Curly Gene-Cu), RSPO2 (Improper Coat-IC), and FGF5 (Long hair-L). Poodles have two curly genes, do not carry for improper coat, and have too long hair genes, for a dog to get curly hair it needs one copy of the curl gene, but with only one copy you will not get as much curl as a dog with two copies, actually, it takes many generations to get that amount of curl back as there is natural variation within the gene and if you talk to Poodle breeders that show, they breed only dogs with thick full coats and it takes a long time to get these coats. You need two improper coat genes to get not facial furnishings and you need two copies of the long hair gene to get long hair. 

​So, if you took any of the three breeds we are using as examples to infuse Merle into the poodle. Two of the breeds have short, straight hair with no furnishings (Great Dane and Dachshund) and one has long hair, but it is straight with no furnishings (Australian Shepherd). So, if you crossed with the Great Dane or Dachshund you would end up with wire haired, short-haired dogs with some furnishings, these dogs would look nothing like a poodle at all, even crossed back to the poodle again, you still would have F1 Goldendoodle looking coats on the curlier sided puppies. You would need to cross them back at least 4-5 generations to get an even remotely looking Poodle coat. Now, with the Aussie, they at least have a long coat, so their first-generation puppies coats would be a bit closer in resemblance to a poodle than the other crosses, but would still only be wavy coats and would need to be crossed back to the poodle at least 3-4 generations to get Poodle looking coats. This is assuming that the Breeder that chose to infuse this other breed genetically tested the puppies to ensure the puppies with the right coat genetics were bred back to the poodle. 

​The next thing to assess is structure, we can all agree that the poodle is built very differently from the Dachshund, Great Dane, and Australian Shepherd. It takes decades to change the entire structure of a dog, but with careful breeding, you can do it. But the dachshund and the Australian Shepherd are completely different in structure body-wise to the poodle, and, likewise, the Great Dane is also completely different in structure, particularly in the head structure. It would take many generations to change this structure when bred back to the poodle. 

Okay, so keeping all this in mind, it is possible that some AKC Breeder did infuse one of these breeds and genetically tested each generation, breeding them back to the poodle over 4-5 generations to achieve a dog that looks like a poodle. They would have had to not only register each generation while hiding the offspring that would obviously not pass as a poodle because if they did not, but they would also be reported to AKC. They would need to keep careful consideration to the structure of each puppy and genetic tests and temperament so that these dogs would eventually show no sign of another breed in them, as the AKC registered Poodles that are out there now breed true to type. While I admit that this is possible, I also think it is highly unlikely and I would go as far as saying that if they did infuse another breed and it was that many generations back that it is unrecognizable in the current Poodles, as the current ones breed true to type in every way... Does it really matter? Also, before you say that someone just lied on their papers, I know of several breeders that have DNA's done many generations back too. 

2. The second option is that it has always occurred in the breed. There was a phase in which all multicolored poodles were thought to be flawed, due to a vast lack of knowledge and many misconceptions on people parts. During this time multi-colored poodles were not bred, and many were culled almost getting rid of those colors altogether. With merle being a gene that can easily be hidden by other genes such as White, Cream, Apricot, and Red, it could have stayed hidden by these genes for many generations, especially due to the fact that these colors were often only bred together, so Merle would have never shown up until people realized that there was nothing wrong genetically with multicolored poodles and started breeding them again, once these poodles were crossed with other colors the merle gene could have emerged then. 

3. The last option is that the Merle gene was a natural mutation in the Poodle, which is how it is believed to have occurred in other breeds that it is present in. 

Regardless of which option you care to believe, the Merle Poodle is AKC Registered. It is DNA'D as purebred Poodle and it is not going anywhere. They are beautiful and breed to the breed standard. I really feel when there are so many health and temperament issues in so many breeds, we should be focused on breeding healthier, better temperament, more structurally sound Poodles and not cause so much drama and conflict over a color that we cannot prove one way or another how it came to be in Poodles. 

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