Suwannee Cockers
The Place for Natural Merles and Sables
SunCatcher's Zingy Zadda
Zadda is a beautiful solid Blue Merle girl who lived with us for almost two years, having one litter, before she was spayed and placed as a pet in a great home in Deltona. She is a smaller version of her dam, SunCatcher's Fiery Sparkle, a solid red, but she inherited her silvery Merle markings from her sire, our Max. But Zadda has a personality all of her own, being quite active and spirited, and she is quite the little Princess, as she seems to know that she is beautiful. She even loved to pose for the camera, unlike several of our other dogs, so we have lots and lots of pictures to choose from for this page.
This is a picture of Zadda when she was only nine months old, but she already had a long, silky coat by that young age.
Zadda was a very unusual looking newborn Cocker pup, and her black mask is readily apparent in this picture taken the day that she was born.
Zadda, at three weeks old, looked much more like a regular Cocker puppy than she had as a newborn, but from her birth we have speculated as to whether or not she is also a Shaded Sable, as well as a Merle. Due to her black mask we have always thought that she could also be a Shaded Sable, and then later, once her coat had grown in, she seemed much blacker than we thought she should be, considering her amount of silver Merle spotting, and one of the signs of Shaded Sable Cockers is an overlay of dark hairs over the diluted Sable undercoat.
But if Zadda is a Sable-Merle, then she is a Blue Sable--like her sister Aidan--rather than a red Sable. Blue Sable is thought to be due to the action of the recessive allele on the D Locus, which in Zadda's case would further dilute her Merle markings. And Zadda does have some beautiful silvery Merle markings. Her eyes are dark brown, not blue, but we have read that blue eyes are actually due to different dilution genes than the Merle genes, and the vast majority of our Merle puppies have dark eyes. In this picture, taken at 3 weeks old, Zadda is yawning, seeming quite bored with the whole picture taking thing.
By seven weeks old Zadda was looking quite silver looking in her Merle spots. Our friend named Emma is holding Zadda for us in these pictures, trying to keep her still enough to get some in-focus shots. And at this time we really thought that Zadda would eventually look like a silver colored dog, with occasional black spots.
By ten weeks of age Zadda was already looking quite fuzzy, and showing that she would have quite a bit of coat. And it was at about this age that we realized that she was darkening quite a bit, but she really surprised us by how black she finally looked. When she was a puppy she had some fuzzy silver hairs on the sides of her muzzle, but they eventually disappeared too, leaving her muzzle--indeed her whole face--quite black looking. We think that the double dilution of the Sable and the Merle might be what gives Zadda's Merle markings their silver coloring, like Collies.
Zadda is one of six in her litter, and here she is shown with her solid black sister, named Smokie, who now lives in California. Smokie started out solid black, but she eventually turned a dusty grey color in her longer hair, again making us speculate if we were seeing the Blue Sable gene at work in this litter.
If Zadda wasn't a Merle--or a Sable--then she would be a solid black dog too, like her sister Smokie, and one genetic writer has likened the Merle gene to acting as if bleach had been thrown on the dog, randomly diluting the base color of the coat. The Merle gene--which may actually be more than one gene--is called "co-dominant" because it does not affect the whole coat, but leaves spots of the original color of the coat--which in Zadda's case is solid black. And traditionally the solid black Cockers have the heaviest coats in the breed, which is one of the reasons that there are so many black Cockers, as many breeders love the black's heavy coats.
And for some reason Merles often have brown spots in their coats, and you can see in the picture with Smokie that Zadda has a brown spot on the tip of her left ear. There is some speculation that Merle dogs with brown spots are actuallyTan Pointed dogs, but that the Merle gene does not know what to do with Tan Points, so it scatters them all over the body. Zadda has a Tan Pointed grandsire, and both of her parents are carrying Tan Points, and Zadda threw one blue Merle and tan pointed puppy in her one litter.
This picture, taken at five months old, is one of our favorite pictures of Zadda, as we can actually see her face. But at this age she was starting to really darken in color.
Here Zadda is out in the dog yard with her solid black sister named Smokie, in the rear, and her solid chocolate sable brother named Suwannee, to the right, who now lives with is family in Destin, Florida. These littermates are shown at about six months old.
By eight months Zadda was clipped and really showing her silver Merle markings, which contrast so beautifully with her very black areas.
Zadda has "tweed" Merle markings on her back, meaning that she has different color patterns within different spots. Look closely!
Zadda's coat is long and silky, with a wonderfully soft texture.
Zadda even has Merle markings on the undeside of her ears, and in this picture, where we caught her napping, her ears looked so large that she reminded us of Dumbo.
Zadda looked very different when she was clipped for the Summer, but we left her beautiful long ears uncut. Our Summers here in Northcentral Florida are very long and hot, and clipped dogs are much happier in the heat, as they can then be more active. And when our dogs are clipped, we get to see all of their muscles move while they are running around out in the dog yards.
But we really like Zadda's beautiful, long, silvery Merled ears.
Zadda had a beautiful litter of five partis--two girls and three boys--including one blue Merle tri girl.
Zadda's one litter should have statistically contained one half Merles, but as there was only one tri Merle puppy in it, and four red or buff partis, we are fairly certain that there were some Cryptic or hidden Merles in this litter--hidden by the buff E Locus gene. But none of these puppies had blue eyes or even pink marked noses, so we just couldn't be sure which puppy was a Merle and which wasn't, or if indeed there were really any other Merles in the litter at all. All of the pups were destined for pet homes, so they will not be reproducing, but this litter shows how easily Merle can be "hidden" under other typical Cocker colors.
The handsome dark buff and white Cocker pup to the right, named Archie, is out of this litter, and he is shown here at about nine months old. Archie lives with his family and another one of our dogs--a Blue Merle and white girl named Sassy--in Sarasota, Florida.
The picture to the left shows Zadda's daughter--a Blue Merle tri girl named Zhoe--at about five months old. Zhoe lives with her family, and with Zadda's half sister, a solid Sable-Merle girl named Zelda, and also with Zelda's solid black brother named Foster (not shown), so this home in Fort Walton Beach, Florida now has three of our dogs, and two of our Merle girls. We love the red collars on these girls, and these two girls do make a good contrast, showing how Merle can look so different on two Merle dogs. Zhoe is a Blue Merle tri, and Zelda is a solid Sable-Merle, and although Zelda looks brown, she is actually a black based dog that is diluted to a reddish brown color by the Sable dilution gene. Zelda is Zadda's half sister.
Zadda now lives with two other Cockers--a chocolate and white boy named Hershey, and a silver solid girl named Darlin--and Darlin is also one of our retired breeding girls, and the dam of our male named Zecchino. These beautiful Cockers all live together in Deltona, Florida. Oh, and that's Brad, under all of those Cockers!
Here Zadda is shown out by the pool in her home, and we love how the sunlight shows off her silver Merle color on her ear. If Zadda was not a Merle, she would be a solid black dog.
And here's another picture taken out by the pool, and Zadda certainly does look as if she is having a good time in sunny Florida!
We would like to thank Zadda's family for allowing us to use their pictures of her in their home in Deltona.
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