#1 Question: What Color Will Our Next Litter Be?

One of the most common questions I get from people inquiring about our Cockapoo puppies is " what color will your next litter be?" and the answer is "we don't know." Of course, we can guess based on past litters and the colors of the parents but that still isn't a 100% guarantee on what we will get so I tell people we won't know for sure until they are born. This litter was born on 12/19/13 and I am going to use them as an example to help explain why there can be so many colors in one litter.
The mom of this litter is Willow, she is a Chocolate Miniature Poodle with White accents on her paws and chest, shown below:

The father to this litter is Winston, he is a Chocolate Merle Cocker Spaniel and he has a beautiful mix of light and dark Chocolate throughout his coat with a White chest, shown below:

Here are pictures of the litter they had (shown below.) There are two Chocolate and White Parti Colors, one Chocolate Tri Color, one Red w/White accents, and one Chocolate Merle:

Now looking at the parents it's pretty obvious where the Chocolate Merle coloring came from (daddy Winston) but you may be wondering how they ended up with so many other colors and the answer is quite simple, it's all based on the colors in their parents backgrounds. Willow's mom is a Red Miniature Poodle and her father is a Chocolate Tri-Colored Miniature Poodle. Winston's mom is a Chocolate Tri-Colored Cocker Spaniel and his dad is a Black, Silver, and White Merle Cocker Spaniel, so, based on the colors of the grandparents, that would explain where the Red baby and the Chocolate Tri-Colored baby came from, but what about the Parti's? Willow's grandma is a Chocolate and White Parti Miniature Poodle so that's where the Parti babies got their markings from. So from a litter of five babies they got colors and markings going all the way back to three generations in their family history, this is why we can't ever be sure what colors we are going to get! We purposely have dogs that have a lot of different colors in their backgrounds so that we can get a nice mix of color and each litter is a nice surprise!