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...
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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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