Coat Type and weather

[Neal 1,787]

I started a similar thread in the gundog section after recently meeting several smooth and wirehaired vizslas. However, partly because nobody added to it, but also because I've broadened my thoughts since then, I thought I'd ask a similar question here instead.

We all know that there are several breeds which come in a variety of coat types depending on either where they're expected to work or where they live. Obvious examples would be smooth and wirehaired German pointers or smooth and wirehaired terriers of various breeds. Also, the breed which got me pondering this in the first place, the vizsla. I suppose you could also say it's true of similar breeds e.g beardie compared to border collie.

This then got me thinking about those breeds with a Goldilocks coat (not too hot but not too cold). Every summer the newspapers and tv all panic and tell us to keep our dogs inside in case they burn their feet or die of heatstroke while my kelpies are saying, "What? It's not even 30c yet!" Yet in the winter they can also cope with the cold. I've heard of some kelpies working reindeer in the Arctic circle and sheep in the Falklands. 

However, I'm not saying 'my dogs have the perfect coat' it's simply that I'm using them as an example as they're what I'm familiar with. If other coat types didn't prove more efficient then surely we wouldn't breed for them. I guess what I'm asking is two different things:

1) how much better is a smooth coated dog at staying cool in the summer compared to a wirehaired dog at keeping warm in the winter? i.e if you lived somewhere with coldish winters and warmish summers, which coat would be most efficient?

2) would a middle-of-the-road coat be better? I'm thinking along the lines of a smooth coated border collie type (bare skinned/bear skinned?)

Any thoughts?

[gnipper 5,966]

To me I'd say a coat like a labrador must be the best type of coat, some smooth terrier have a nice thick coat too but a lot have a thin bull terrier type coat. 

[Gilbey 1,408]

Can't comment on gundog coats. The best all-round coats I've seen are "slape" collies, the rain/snow runs off, they don't gather crap/debris, aren't too heavy

Probably suffer in real cold though, everything has a thick double coat, my dad apparently had a Samoyed cross as a kid that you couldn't see sleeping in the snow covered over. Seen huskies on the TV doing the same, no kennel just staked out on a windy hill end

Edited August 9, 2023 by Gilbey

[Neal 1,787]

12 hours ago, Gilbey said:

Can't comment on gundog coats. The best all-round coats I've seen are "slape" collies, the rain/snow runs off, they don't gather crap/debris, aren't too heavy

Probably suffer in real cold though, everything has a thick double coat, my dad apparently had a Samoyed cross as a kid that you couldn't see sleeping in the snow covered over. Seen huskies on the TV doing the same, no kennel just staked out on a windy hill end

Yeah, my kelpies are similar. The first time my first kelpie went for a swim he was touch dry less than five minutes later. I used to say to people that his grandmother must have been a non-stick teflon frying pan.

When I lived in Coniston, my ex-girlfriend's sister had a collie x samoyed which she'd drop off at her great-aunts house. This was back in the day when people left their doors unlocked and the door was usually open too and the dog would spend the whole day either asleep on the font door step or in a bed it had dug out in the lee of the hedge.

In Iris Combes book (Herding Dogs) re the slape coat, she put forward the theory that bare skinned was originally bear skinned i.e. short thick impenetrable coat like a bear and that people simply misspelt it and altered the meaning. Makes sense I suppose as a bear skinned collie makes more sense than a bare skinned one.