All the Colors
No good poodle is a bad color, and this holds true UNLESS it's merle.
The American and Candian breed standards read:
"The coat is an even and solid color at the skin. In blues, grays, silvers, browns, cafe-aulaits, apricots and creams the coat may show varying shades of the same color. This is frequently present in the somewhat darker feathering of the ears and in the tipping of the ruff. While clear colors are definitely preferred, such natural variation in the shading of the coat is not to be considered a fault. Brown and cafe-au-lait Poodles have liver-colored noses, eye-rims and lips, dark toenails and dark amber eyes. Black, blue, gray, silver, cream and white Poodles have black noses, eye-rims and lips, black or self colored toenails and very dark eyes. In the apricots while the foregoing coloring is preferred, liver-colored noses, eye-rims and lips, and amber eyes are permitted but are not desirable.
Major fault: color of nose, lips and eye-rims incomplete, or of wrong color for color of dog. Parti-colored dogs shall be disqualified. The coat of a parti-colored dog is not an even solid color at the skin but is of two or more colors. (pertaining to conformation events)
Merle - NO
While the Merle color has been around for decades even longer, the merle color is not a historically occurring color in the breed (Standards, Miniatures & Toys). In order for this color to present itself into the poodle gene poodle, a breed, containing the merle color, had to have been introduced.
Purebred breeds that have the merle color include Collies, Shelties and Australian sheepdogs (among others). Which means at some point a poodle would have had to of been cross bred to a merle breed, then bred back to a poodle. After 4 or more generations of breeding back to poodles, these cross breeds will genetically DNA test purebred.
In addition, often unethical breeders will falsify registration papers. The Canadian kennel club does not have an option for "MERLE" to be selected as a recognizable colors for poodles. So papers on Merle's will most likely have the next dominant color option selected.
Kandansk Colors
The primary color at Kandansk currently, is Black.
With that said, we have our first Brown female and a few others that carry the recessive genes for either brown or cream. So in the future there may be additional colors here.
As a demonstration of our dedication to preservation of the poodle, as of 2023, we are including the color test for Merle in our standard color testing. All of Kandansk dogs do NOT carry the Merle gene and never will.
