Ok, I've got the ref... now hoping Becky can find the paper and do a quick translation

Reetz I, Stecker M, Wegner W. 1977. Audiometrische Befunde in einer Merlezucht. Deutsche Tierärztliche Wochenschrift 84:273-7.

Strain (USA) refers to that paper saying -

and the dappled (merle) dachshund, where 18.2% were reported to be bilaterally deaf and 36.4% were unilaterally deaf (Ref 21).

It looks to me as if he's referring to single merle not double. What d'you think?

http://www.lsu.edu/deafness/Tufts.htm

Unfortunately google only came up with one reference ot this and it wasn't the paper lol!
Becky

It does seem to imply all dapples but I've yet to come across a deaf dappled dachshund! As I have wanted a dapple for years I have asked many dapple breeders and either they are lying or the incidence in single dapples isn't very high at all, certainly not more than in solid coloured dogs.
Becky

In show type cockers there's things that should be known regards colours. Solid to Solid could produce particolours if both parents carry the gene for that particolour, if particolour genes are present you also run the risk of getting mismarked solids, it's reccomended not to breed particolours to solids for this reason. Particolour to particolour cannot produce solids, I've seen solid black called black and white just because it has a bit of white on it's chest, this would be a problem if bred to another particolour as solids would be produced prooving that one parent isn't a particolour.
I think the KC should only allow certain words to be used for colours as I've seen so many variations of the same thing, such as: orange roan being called apricot and gold/red being called tan, champagne and copper .

The "minefield" that patch is referring to is (I think) the risk of producing phantom merles which some breeders are doing deliberately eg: red merle stud dog put to a sable bitch, 8 puppies in the litter, one of these is a red merle the rest are sable. statistically 50% of these pups should be merles although it is possible for all of them to be or maybe just the one that is obvious. Because of the colour it is impossible to tell. The same problem would occur when breeding an ee red bitch with a blue merle dog that also carries ee red. Some of the pups could be both merle and ee red but you would not be able to tell. If one of these ee red pups were bred to a solid and merle puppies produced then you know that it was a merle but every pup in the litter would carry the ee red gene so the problem could be repeated. It is almost inevitable that at some point double merles could be produced with all (or perhaps none) of the associated health problems The litters I mentioned are only examples but I know for a fact that "reputable" breeders have already produced pups such as these

This Collie terminology does cause problems I'm assuming by the above you mean brown but then it's not clear why you have specified this. Black pigment or brown, no difference in this situation.

Sable merles can be difficult or sometimes impossible to tell in adulthood because the eumelanin (dark) pigment fades as they mature. But sable merles are unmistakable at birth. Have a look at Becky's Dachshund cross pups in this thread. Recording this on registration is the way to go.

Yes, this is a good point.

Australian red (ee) isn't a common colour in Border Collies and hopefully with time, anyone breeding these and merles would have suffient knowledge to avoid these problems.

In Rough Collies they don't have ee red but they do have sable and merle and reputable breeders avoid double merles by following the very simple rule of only ever breeding a sable or merle to a tri. Would be much easier in BCs in fact as the vast majority of dogs have eumelanin pigment that supports the expression of merle.

LOl yes I meant brown, used that as an example because at the time mine was chewing my feet, never even thought of the blue (black) merles

Unfortunately there are people who have bred such a litter and it has not been recorded on the registration as they were not aware of what they had produced that is what I was referring to

It is becoming more popular, I only know of a couple in agility but already have spoken to several people that want their next dog to be that colour and it has already been proven to be in ISDS lines so it's not just australian lines that could have this problem. Merles have always been popular do to their unusual appearance. Because the ee red dogs are not that common at the moment they are "different" and therefore desireable. I can see no reason for anyone to deliberately produce dogs that are possibly ee red and merle. It is simply not necessary.:smt102

Yes I can see that they may become more popular simply because of the rarity. Fortunately, there don't seem to be many breeds that have recessive red and merle in the genepool and good policy of the KC to ban merle in the Chi as that would have been one more.

They banned it because they don't believe merle Chi's are purebred not for any other reason!
Becky