Resolved SpritteResolver Blink animation runs but not showing while Skelatal animation works fine?

HI I'm trying to figure out if this falls under the 2D Animation Limitations noted in the documentation.

We have an animated avatar that walks and blinks at the same time.

After our migration to Animation2D 7.0.9 (with Unity 2021.3.16f1) I redid our frame by frame blink animation so that the animation clip keyframes link to the correct SpriteResolver elements to do the blink.

When I run the game, I can see the blink animation running in the Animator window (little progress bar moves), and the idle animation clip runs and switches randomly to blink, as it should, directed by our script code.

But watching the SpriteResolver while running shows it is doing nothing when the blink happens, even though the animation clip is running and the clip does reference the correct resolver category and labels.

So we cannot see the blink in the game window. Just the idle Open-eyed stare clip (the idle clip is 1 frame long)

What could be going on? This all worked fine before the migration.

The eye idle and blink animations are additive on top of our walking avatar, which just animates the rotation and position of the rigging.

Does the walk animation qualify as a SpriteRenderer animation, and the eye-blink is not working because I am mixing both kinds of animations in one Animator?

If so, can I create an additive blink animation if I have to split that off into a separate Animator?

Thanks for your help!