​Coats & Shedding

OH SO FLUFFY!!!  Many of you that have fallen in love with the "doodle-dogs" have done so not just for their great nature and adorable shag, but the allure of the "hypoallergenic" coat that is touted as being non-shedding. Well, I have bad news for you: 
Doodles with shedding-breed heritage DO shed!
There is no such thing as an early generation hypoallergenic doodle from shedding breed ancestry.  
Now, what does all that mean?  Well, shedding breeds that commonly contribute to doodles are: Labradors, Golden Retrievers, Bernese Mountain Dogs and Australian Shepherds.  These are all very "sheddy" dogs.  As individuals some are worse than others... just like people, dogs within the same breed differ from each other.  Breeds that do not shed that are also commonly "doodled" are: Soft Coated Wheaton Terriers, Shih-Tzu, Bichon, Yorkshire Terrier... if you breed a non-shedding purebred to a non-shedding Poodle, you will not get shedding in the doodle they produce.  But if your doodle has shedding breed heritage, you have to walk into it assuming you will get light to moderate shedding from your doodle... and if you don't, yay!
Now, having said that, the majority of these doodles are allergy friendly and do not cause grief to people with mild or moderate allergies.  If you are not sure you will react to a Bernedoodle or Aussie Mountain Doodle, it is best to find several similar doodles to hang around with in order to gauge your reaction to these dogs. 

The Genetics of Shedding

I hope that this page will help you understand the different coat-types you see in Bernedoodles and Aussie Mountain Doodles.  This info does cross over into other doodle types, however, in other types there are some genes that are just not present in the Bernedoodles and the Aussie Mountain Doodles - one example of this is short hair, which we see contributed from Labradors.  This further affects coat-type but it is not a gene we work with in the Moonstruck program, so we will not be factoring in genes that are not present in our particular dogs.  
Welcome back!! Moving along...

The area identified as the Shedding Locus has two known alleles: SD (+, shedding) and sd (-, non-shedding), dominant in that order.  A dog that is +/+ will shed.  Bernese Mountain Dogs and Aussie Shepherds are +/+ shedding dogs.  Dogs that are -/- for shedding will not shed (or well be very low shed). Poodles are -/- for shedding (or should be).  There are other factors involved that contribute to the shedding a dog may or may not have: coat length, undercoat, furnishings... maybe more we don't even know about!  What we can say for sure is this: Dogs that are homozygous negative for shedding and dogs that are homozygous for Furnishings (FF) have the best chance at being virtually non-shedding.  This virtually non-shedding dog would be FF, sd/sd (or -/-) on their respective loci. Notice we have not mentioned anything about curly coats being a factor in non-shedding.
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Curly Coats
​Let's get the myth about curls right out of the way: curl ≠ non-shedding.  There is some kind of uninformed info out there on the inter-webs about "the curlier the dog the less it sheds". WRONG! There are breeds out there that are specifically curly and known for high levels of shedding. Something people don't realize is that dog genetics are universal - meaning they function the same in all breeds and crosses (there may be mutations specific to a breed, but if that breed was outcrossed to anther breed it would pass onto the offspring of said outcross). The gene for curl is the same in Poodles as it is in Borzoi as it is in Bichon as it is in Irish Water Spaniels (save for maybe breed specific variances, but that gets all complicated).  So, whatever you have been told or read about curly coats and shedding... empty it from your mind and absorb this page ;)  This Curly Coated Retriever, seen here with a PILE of hair, clearly sheds. 
Curl is an incomplete dominant gene found at its own little home in the genome - the Cu locus. A dog that is +/+ for curl would be a curly dog (like a Poodle).  A dog that is -/- for curl would have a fairly straight coat.  A dog that has both + and - could express a variety of coats that range between curly and straight due to the incomplete dominance of the curl gene allowing the straight gene to influence the amount of curl that is expressed. ​
Curl is not our program's favorite gene for one main reason:  Doodles with tight curly coats are much harder to groom and keep from matting.  The coat quality (strong or weak furnishings - see below) and level of shedding can exacerbate this issue or alleviate it.  This is one of the main factors that groomers do not like grooming doodles... it is also a source of a lot of "doodle-hate" spread on the internet because, truthfully, some doodle coats can be absolutely terrible to maintain.
Back to shedding: The shedding alleles (+/-) have a similar relationship with each other as the curl alleles. The dominant SD allele (+) is an incomplete dominant, so it will allow the recessive non-shedding allele to penetrate it. So a dog that has a genome of +/- will likely shed, but how much will depend on the genes present at the furnishings locus as well as the overall quality of the coat (we talk about this coming up!).
As you can see from the chart above, shedding genes are simply a part of the Bernedoodles (and Aussie Mountain Doodles... and any doodle that comes from a shedding breed heritage).  The Australian Labradoodle (ALD) is in a unique situation as there are many, many dedicated breeders who have built registering bodies, tested breeding dogs and held back non-shedding dogs breeding those generation after generation. + shedding genes are still present in the ALD, but at a lower instance.  The ALD's that Moonstruck utilizes are -/- for shedding. 

So, to recap: Bernedoodles and Aussie Mountain Doodles shed... how much?  Some will shed more than others, but you can *almost* be safe to say if the dog is furnished, it will not shed anywhere close to the amount of a Bernese Mountain Dog. If you are looking for a "hypo-allergenic, non-shedding" Bernedoodle - there is no such thing :)

Coat-Types

***Disclaimer: the following statements made in regards to furnishings and shedding are based on years of observation.  They are not absolutes and there can definitely be examples of dogs with completely the opposite expression than the statement.  However, we see this to be true for the majority of our dogs.  Current DNA knowledge/testing is limited and there are clearly many genes that contribute to a particular phenotype that we have not yet identified, so what I say here is partially based on quantitative, fact based science and qualitative observations.***

Furnished COats

When you imagine a doodle, generally you imagine a cute, teddy-bear dog - floofy everywhere!  But these are mixed breed dogs and there are a multitude of genes to be passed down from parents to offspring that mix and mingle and express in a variety of ways.  There are dominant gens, recessive genes, co-dominant genes, genes with incomplete penetrance... This is why doodle coats vary so widely, even within the same litter!  There is a sliding scale when it comes to furnishings and not all dogs fall right into a particular type (perhaps they will be more in-between two phenotypes), but there are three observable types of furnishings in Bernedoodles and Aussie Mountain Doodles: 
Strong Furnishings
​Most of the ALD that we use in our program have good examples of strong furnishings.  This is a result of several generations of selective breeding done by the ALD breeders for non-shedding, soft, fluffy (referred to often as fleece) coats. Early-gen doodles (let's say up to 5 generations) will have a decent chance at shedding, at least a bit.  How much really does depend on what genes they have inherited from their parents.  However, observably, Bernedoodles and Aussie Mountain Doodles with plushy, thick coats at 7 weeks will be lower (and if you are lucky even non) shedding.  
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Example of a strong/think furnished coat-type
Above are several examples of hairballs produced from Moonstruck doodles. All these dogs have strong furnished coats, and yet the descriptions of their shedding by their families varies.  We know that part of the variability is the individual dog's Furnishings genome: F/fw, F/f, fw/f in conjunction with their Shedding genome: +/+, +/-, -/-.  We know that this is only a part of the picture of shedding in a doodle because we have examples of F1s (Sasha) shedding less than and F1b.  An F1b is going to be one of two possibilities: shedding +/- or shedding -/-, (F/?).  An F1 is automatically +/-, F/f (or possible F/fw depending on the non-Bernese parent). Sasha is a great example of a nearly non-shedding F1 Australian Bernedoodle.  Why she sheds so very little is not known... yet! One day scientists will find more genes and more answers! 
​Weak Furnishings
Furnishings are not always thick with infinite growth.  There are doodles that have a furnished coat that is sparser and the growth is finite - meaning it reaches a certain length and it just stops growing. Bernedoodles with infinite growth will never stop growing, no matter how long, and matted, it gets. Weak furnishings, generally, do shed notably more than their strong furnished counter parts, but not as much as a Bernese Mountain Dog, by far.  These weaker furnished dogs usually look more scruffy than super fluffy, the coat is usually easier to manage - especially on the legs, which in my opinion is the most annoying part of the whole grooming process (legs get wet and dirty more so than the body so the coat tangles and mats there quicker than the rest of the body).  The furnishings genotype for weak furnishings is: Fw/Fw or Fw/f. 
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​German Shepherds, Bernese Mountain Dogs, Australian Shepherds and Golden Retrievers are all very high shedding dogs.  They shed all year round with two seasonal molts where it all just gets WORSE!  I did not have any good pictures of a Berner with a pile of hair so I have used one of my German Shepherds as an example of compare and contrast as I find a lot of families don't understand that the hair they see on their doodle - even if it were as bad as Neva who is considered pretty bad for a doodle - is NOT severely shedding, lol. This page has been constructed to give those who do not have a reference a base for understanding the complexity of the inheritance of shedding and what they are potentially in for when adding a Bernedoodle or Aussie Mnt. Doodle to their lives.
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This 18lb Shiba Inu sheds all year long with 2 seasonal molts. This is a grooming session during molt.... 18lbs!! "And that's not even all of it. This goes on for a month and then they drop their guard hairs and get 'crispy'." - Direct quote from Neo's Mom

Unfurnished Coats

I will get this one out of the way quickly as you should be familiar with this from the article you clicked on above.  A doodle with a smooth face, smooth legs and feathers (longer hair on the backs of the legs) is a dog that has inherited two recessive copies of a gene called "improper coat" (known as IC.  IC is interchangeable with f-unfurnished).  It has been dubbed the improper coat because it was a DNA test originally used for Portuguese Water Dogs (PWD).  PWDs are supposed to be "furnished" - fluffy and bearded (they are often mistaken as doodles or vise versa), but here and there PWD breeders would get these smooth looking, unfurnished, unbearded dogs that just looked like a "normal" dog.  They called this an improper coat, but the reality is that all dogs that are not bearded - Bernese Mountain Dogs, Golden Retrievers, Labs, German Shepherds, Huskies, etc. - are all dogs with an "improper" coat or "unfurnished" coat.  This is explained in much more detail on our page all about this coat type: Unfurnished Doodles.
Unfurnished doodles have a wide range of shedding from next to nothing to hair everywhere.  The amount of shedding an unfrunished dog does will be impacted by the Shedding locus genome: unfurnished dogs that are +/+ for shedding will likely shed a lot, unfurnished dogs that are +/- for shedding will likely be moderate shedders, while unfurnished dogs that are -/- will likely shed very little (like Skittles below).   Each genotype is progressively less shedding.  There surely are more unidentified influences on the shedding of an unfurnished dog, but we can't discuss what we don't know!  It is not possible to look at an unfurnished puppy and know its genome for shedding potential. The only way to know is by inference (based on the parent's genomes) or to DNA test.  Shedding, usually, does not start until the adult coat is coming in and establishes itself.  This starts as early as 3-4 months of age and is generally 100% in by 18-24 months.  Unfurnished coats, despite the shedding, are low upkeep and easy to keep clean... and cheaper as they do not NEED to see a groomer.  If you like the concept of a doodle for health and temperament but you don't like the whole "bearded-poodley" thing, an unfurnished doodle may be your answer!  Extra info tidbit: Unfurnished hold their infant colouring.  They do not fade out or silver, etc.  That is a curse reserved for furnished dogs.
You have made it to the end of this novel of a webpage!  Good for you!  I hope you have taken some valuable information from it.  This is just a little note to say that we at Moonstruck do not generally test our dogs for the shedding locus alleles. Why? Because it's simply not that important. We are far more concerned with health and temperament than a bit of shedding.  The majority of our doodles (save the unfurnished) are allergy friendly.