Webmaster;
I am not new to cockers as we had black and
blond cockers when I was
a child fifty years ago and as recently as 6 years ago. I lived
in
a small town in central Michigan and after looking at the pictures of
merle
cockers I have to tell you that i saw many, many cockers during my
childhood
that could have passed for merles. my aunt had a cocker that my
uncle
hunted for years that was definitely a merle in color. as to her
dna...it wouldn't have existed then. she was never bred but she surely
was merle in color. i am now 58 so that would have been over 30
years
ago....
i do understand that the issue is health and not color but i
am wondering if this color isn't the result of breeding field cockers
or
english cockers into american cocker lines? that is probably very
simplistic
thinking on my part. i mention this because about 18 years ago we
were given a black and white male cocker who could have been classified
as a merle...
..
as for the cockers...I used to have a picture of tilly, my aunt's
cocker,
but lost it a long time ago after moving three times. as i
remember,
she had one blue eye...as a kid that stood out because it was
spooky.
i don't have any pictures of joey because i'm not as avid a picture
taker
as i should be. joey did not have blue eyes but did resemble
"charly".
joey was born in 1982 or 83 and died several years ago. i thought
we got him later but my daughter corrected me so it has been well over
20 years ago, not 18 as i thought. he lived to be over 16.
i probably shouldn't have written, not having
photos, but tilly did
exist and the pictures that my aunt had were of her hunting in the
field.
unfortunately my aunt died over 20 years ago and i've lost touch with
that
side of the family. she was actually my great aunt. not
much
help huh? tilly was alive back in the late 50's and would have
died
in the 70's....
4/21/2007
Here is another email about cocker back in the 50's.
I've had Cockers all my life, and started breeding them around
1990 - and until 2006 I had never encountered the Merles to know what I
was seeing. But I very distinctly remember from when I was 12 or years
old, in the 1950's, an old gentleman in our little country town had a
beautiful
Black and White Cocker Spaniel bird dog - with those 'spooky' blue
eyes,
and 'Ponto' was in great demand as a stud because he produced beautiful
puppies that were nearly all excellent gun dogs - and folks loved those
blue eyes! I had a Brown Cocker from Ponto and our Liver and White
Cocker
female that had one blue and one brown eye. I don't know if Ponto was
registered
anywhere at all, but I do know Mr Bush kept records of who he was bred
with,and who got those puppies, and on some kind of official-looking
forms.
Of course, Ponto, Mr Bush and very probably those records are long gone
now...
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