mating smooths to smooths

needless to say if you know me youll know how much i love smooths and want to keep to smooths... (if you dont know you do now lol)

ok so heres my question.....


alot of people say mating smooth to smooth all the time will produce smooths who have a wiry coat, BUT in other places you can only put smoths on smooths and roughs on roughs so how come they dont end up with terrible coats???

whats your view on this?

a few breeders i have spoke with wont do smooth on smooth matings at all ...

a few will only do it once........

cheri xx

You do need to have a smooth to rough mating every couple of generatios, or the smooth coat can become thin & wiry ..... the rough 'injection' keeps the smooth coat thick & plush as it should be to be 'fit for function'. also roughs tend to be heavier in bone than smooths, so constant smooth to smooth matings produce lighter framed, tall leggy, slim dogs that are not nice to look at

this is what ive always thought but how do you explain the smooths abroad as they have only smooths in there lines

well, seeing as they are abroad, we cannot see the coat or feel it so see for ourselves .... do these particular dogs look taller, leggier with less bone, or waif like?

yes a couple look thin and leggy even by my standard ( cant stand fat dogs!)

but most of them look great and lovely plush coats, i just wonder how they havent lost this by doing all the smooth matings???

it fasinates me how the most people say you must add a rough ( i agree cirtainly when it comes to bone) but yet abroad years and years of smooths are still providing nice pups( needless to say there will be crap pups but there are crap pups here aswell!) some smooths ive seen are infact massive!!!

no idea !!!

cheri

It could be that they have used smooths that have come from mixed coated litters, so although the line is predominantly smooth coated, the dog that was used could have been a smooth litter brother to a rough coat ...Maybe you should ask how they are keeping the coats?

they cant have come from a rough as you cant register rough to smooth matings !!!!

it must have been smooth all the way as they are treated as differnt breeds!!

cheri

In that case then, email or contact them & ask how they manage it....


Have you seen any of the dogs 'in the flesh?' How do you know the coats are plush? What looks plush or thick in a picture may not necessarily be the case in person ...

Maybe if any of the members who are breeders of smooths who cant use rough x smooth matings, could shed a light on how they manage to keep the smooth x smooth mating coats 'plush'

i dont know anyone who does it here its mainly abroad so havent seen the dogs in the flesh but still they cant all have horrible coats surely???

it was sort of a "wondering" kind of question /post i dont know anyone personally who does it but it must be the case in places where smooths can only go with smooths?

any members abroad who can only do smooth to smooths let us know what you think

cheri

When we went to the WUSB in Belgium 4 years ago (its the World St Bernard Show) we saw some smooths there & apart from being tall, with no bone & very lean, their coats were not thick at all ..... they appeared very fine .... Maybe in some countries those dogs living outside in kennels naturally thickens the coats, i dont know .....

Cheri

Some breeders don't breed smooth to smooth for one reason is that , you may lose the "double coat" and this to breed specialists is a fault.
I have to disagree that smooths have less bone that roughs, I have two smooths here and they have fab bone structure, a hell of a lot better than some roughs that I have put my hands on. WUSB is judged to the swiss standard which is extremely different than FCI standard.
Rough coats can hide a lot of faults, but it would be no harm IF your smooths have single coats to introduce a rough coat.
This again depends on the stud dog that you are using, weither his parents are a rough to smooth mating or rough to rough mating. In certain continental lines, even the rough coats aren't as long as what you would find here.

Random question.. months after the thread was started...

Which countries can't you register rough to smooth matings due to them being classed as separate breeds? (as I read somewhere in Cheri's post somewhere at the start)

I have also spoken to breeders who suggest that rough lines get an injection of smooth blood every so often, as with some of the rough lines as generations go on the hair shafts in roughs gets longer & longer & becomes curly & therefore not correct

i know i was told if you need to use a smooth to remove curly coated or very long roughs it would need to be a smooth who has come out of 2 smooths to stop the throw backs .

as for the breeding smooth to smooth only and a seperate breed -im not sure if i was wrongly informed or if its just they are seperate for all classes at shows,

cheri

Apparently there is a DNA test you can get - swab from cheek cells I think that can tell you if your dog carries the dominant smooth gene

Rough to smooth matings are registered in every country. If you keep breeding smooth to smooth you will lose the double coat.