The discussion about Single Coats made me look at Tilly's coat, and wonder if she would be classed as having a single coat. I never questioned whether she had a double coat, because I thought all Labs did. Her coat seems to have guard hair and undercoat, but the guard hair is definitely finer and shorter than Cooper's (or our previous Lab, Ginger) When someone describes a Lab as having a Single coat, what exactly does it look like? What common breeds have a single coat? All of our labs have been primarily field dogs, but while Cooper's build is the most typical of an American Field Style dog, she has the coarsest guard hair and the biggest Otter tail of any of them.
It varies between Labs and varies greatly by breed. Some breeds have such a thick undercoat people can make yarn out of it and then hats, maybe even sweaters. Weimeraners and Boxers have a single coat, lots of others. My two Labs are both from show/bench lines but Jet's undercoat was much more lush than Oban's. Oban's is short and not as soft and it almost looks like a kitchen cleaning pad. When Oban did some field training work our trainer had a field bred Lab just two months younger than him. Her coat was very strange, it seemed to be only under coat. Her whole body was covered in short, soft hairs and no, she had not been clipped or shaved.
My terrier type Millie has what I would call a single coat , she is long haired but cant be clipped because there is no undercoat , just her long hair and then skin and nothing in between , so she has her hair cut as it keeps growing if I don't give her a trim every few months . Lab Sam has what I would call a top and undercoat , the top being quite coarse and then undercoat being like down
Just had a look at ours, out of interest. Belle (mongrel collie x) is quite fluffy (more so nsince she was spayed all those years ago), but I'd say she has a double coat - very soft undercoat, top coat still soft but longer - Furminator works well on her. Coco (Lab x GSD) also has a double coat, short, downy under coat and longer but still soft-ish (not as coarse as Scooby Lab was) top coat. They both loved being "explored" just now.
The Furminator definitely pulls out the under coat on Tilly, and leaves the guard coat, A zoom and groom pulls the guard hair but not the under coat. Tilly seems to get much wetter in the rain than Cooper, which is why I started wondering if she only had a single coat, but her coat does not look like a Boxer or Weimeraner, so I guess it is just a shorter softer double coat. FWIW the dust bunnies that inhabit our house all seem to be made of undercoat. If we gathered it all up we could probably knit a new dog every two weeks. Incidentally my first dog after college was Malamute, so I've seen double coats in spades.
