Anytime the words, “cryptic” or “phantom” show up, we get a tingle that hints we’re about to enter the unknown. Nah. It’s just our imagination having a bit of fun because far from being mysterious as our title suggests (shame on us), cryptic and phantom are terms that show up in a discussion about merles in the Australian Shepherd.

Merle is actually a coat pattern, and in the Aussie, it’s a mottled pattern with contrasting shades of blue or red. Cryptic merles are either liver or black, and usually have one or even a few small patches of merle somewhere on their body. Because you can’t see what color the coat would have been anywhere there are white spots,  some cryptic merles may look like they not merles at all. For this reason, cryptic merles in this breed are sometimes called “phantom merles,” but cryptic merle is the technically correct term.

Our image is one that a friend of National Purebred Dog Day, Lisa Kress-Pope‎, shared with us back in 2014.  The female in this photograph is a cryptic or hidden blue merle female, her merling is very tiny and hard to see.  Lisa circled the areas that are merle. Thank you, Lisa!