XL
Sedona, Arizona
Merle American Bully for Sale
7 merle puppies are standing with me in Sedona right now, raised in the house and seen by my vet before they go home.
Yes, there are 7 merle American Bully puppies for sale here today. The coat is uncommon in the breed, and the first thing worth saying is that scarcity and quality are two separate measurements. I’m Greg Harpson, I’ve bred American Bullies here since 2015, and coat is the last thing I select for, well behind temperament and behind structure.
The other coats here this week
If merle turns out not to be the one, here are the rest of the coats in the current group, closest to merle first.
The genetics behind a merle coat
The M locus, on its own. A single copy mottles the coat into patches and often lightens the eye. It is a dominant allele, which carries a useful consequence: a merle dog always has at least one merle parent, because two non-merle dogs cannot produce a merle between them.
Reading a merle, and what it gets muddled with
New buyers sometimes confuse it with brindle, though side by side they look nothing alike: brindle is directional striping, merle is irregular patching. The confusion that actually matters is not about appearance at all, it is between a single merle and a double merle, and that one cannot be settled by eye, only by asking about the parents.
Where merle sits in the breed
This is the page where being blunt earns its keep. A single-merle dog is an ordinary, healthy animal and there is nothing wrong with buying one. A double merle, bred from two merle parents, is at high risk of being deaf, blind or both, and there is no way to tell which you are being offered by looking at the puppy. The large sums attached to merle are exactly what push some people to breed merle to merle, so the money and the harm are wired directly together. Ask me about both parents of any merle I have standing. It is one question, and on this page it is the only one that really counts.
Merle in all its forms draws the heaviest demand and the heaviest marketing in the breed, and that is the uncomfortable centre of this page, because that same demand is what drives the merle-to-merle breeding that produces deaf and blind dogs. The coat itself is uncommon rather than genuinely rare. Judge any merle on the honesty of the answers you get about its parents, not on the volume of the sales pitch.
To place it against its neighbours, here is how merle compares on how scarce it really is and on how often buyers go looking for it. The coats beside it in the table are the ones people most often weigh against merle.
| Coat | Rarity | Monthly searches |
|---|---|---|
| Merle | Uncommon | 480/mo |
| Blue Merle | Uncommon | 720/mo |
| Chocolate Merle | Rare | 110/mo |
| White and Piebald | Uncommon | 90/mo |
| Brindle | Uncommon | 170/mo |
What this coat means for the dog’s health
The most serious in the breed. Two copies of the merle allele, which only comes from breeding merle to merle, carries a high risk of deafness, blindness or both. The association is well established across a great many breeds, not just this one.
Was the sire merle, and was the dam merle? One merle parent is fine. Two is what produces double merles, and you cannot read that off the puppy in front of you. Ask me about both parents of any merle here and I’ll give you a straight answer. A seller who won’t is telling you something.
Beyond the coat, the rest is about the breed rather than the colour. The full picture is here, and you can see how every coat lines up.
I don’t screen or certify the parents and I won’t pretend otherwise. What I do stand behind: every puppy is examined by Bell Rock Veterinary Clinic before it leaves, it has had DHPP with the booster and the canine influenza shot by ten weeks and been dewormed between two and ten weeks, the written record travels with it, and you take it to your own vet inside the first week. Any dog I breed can come back to me at any point in its life.
Asking after a merle puppy
Tell me roughly where you are and I’ll walk you through getting the puppy to you, whether that is me meeting you within a couple of hours of Sedona, ground transport, or a nanny who flies the puppy home in the cabin. I’ll also give you an honest read on whether this one fits your household.