Izzy and Wynter the Double Merle Aussies.

Meet Wynter and Izzy, now these girls right here are super special and I was lucky enough to meet and photograph them on Sunday evening. They are both double merle Australian Shepherds, Wynter is deaf and partially blind and Izzy is both deaf and blind.

A small caption from their Facebook page: "Double Merle's occur when two merle dogs are bred together. It doesn't matter what breed or color merle they are. If two merle dogs are bred together, each puppy in the litter has a 25% chance of being born a double merle. A double merle inherits the merle gene twice. One copy of the merle gene gives the dog a marbling effect on the dogs coat and creates lighter spots throughout the solid coat. In a double merle, the marbling/lightening effect is doubled and the coat becomes predominantly white. Double merles also have a very high chance of being deaf , blind or both because they lack pigment where it would normally be. The double merles are often killed at birth just because they are white, when it is still too early to tell if the puppy will have any hearing or vision problems. They just assume, and kill them because they know that no one is going to pay big money for a "defective" puppy."

Their owners are trying to raise awareness in trying to get breeders to stop this practice and so I offered them a photo session so they'd have nice photographs to go along with their mission.

Izzy The Double Merle is their page, head on over to learn more.

#petportrait #petphotography #puppy #dog #dogs #Aussie