Unfurnished Doodles
(The doodles no one talks about!)

Furnished F1 Sable Australian Bernedoodle

When you think "Doodle" you probably think a fluffy dog that has that "teddy bear" cuteness.  The Doodle has become overwhelmingly popular in the past decade and now there are all kinds of Doodles out there: Labradoodle (Labradoor/Poodle), Goldendoodles (Golden Retriever/Poodle), Aussiedoodles (Australian Shepherd/Poodle), Schnoodle (Schnauzer/Poodle), Cockapoo (Cocker Spaniel/Poodle), and of course our favorite the Bernedoodle (Bernese/Poodle but in the Moonstruck program we prefer to cross to multigeneration Labradoodles), but the list of Doodles goes on and on and on.  Love 'em or hate 'em, the Dooodles are here to stay.

But there's a secret Doodle out there that experienced doodle breeders are familiar with but the general public less so: the Unfurnished Doodle.  The Unfurnished Doodle is a well accepted fact of breeding doodles, but they are not well known away from the breeding communities as they are not openly talked about too much.  It's like they are the embarrassing, ugly sibling that no one wants to admit is very much a part of the family!  

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Furnishings are responsible for the bearded fluffiness that makes a doodle look like a doodle.  It is a dominant gene (also called an allele) that is passed down from the Poodle and makes a doodle floofy.  But, if you remember your biology lessons, we all inherit one allele from our mother and one from our father.  The furnishings gene simply masks the expression of the recessive unfurnished gene that a lot of doodles still carry in their genome.  There are three identified furnishings alleles: Strong Furnishings (F), Weak Furnishings (Fw) and unfurnished (f, also known as IC) - dominant in that order.

These three dogs express the phenotype associated with each known Furnishings Locus allele

Fun Fact: The IC (also known as "f") allele has been dubbed "improper coat" because it was a DNA test originally used for Portuguese Water Dogs. 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.

​Now, there is more to the coat type and shedding than just this one set of genes we are talking about here.  It is speculated that there are several other identified and unidentified genes that play a roll in the type of coat a dog possesses.  We are going to keep it all simple here and focus just on Furnishings on this page. If you want to dive deeper into coats, click here! 

Poodles are a furnished breed.  All Poodle genotypes (are supposed to) look like this: FF.  They receive one F from their mother and one F from their father.  Simple enough.  Now we add to that...  Not all Poodles are FF. In the dog world there are many different "lines" within each breed.  In Poodles there are "show lines", "working lines" and "pet lines".  Without dragging dog-politics into this lets just say that we can and do see Fw and f alleles in Poodles, and more often we see a heterozygous genome in the pet lines. This is why it is important, when using a Poodle to make doodles, that the Poodle is genetically tested.  Never assume just because it is a Poodle that it is homozygous FF.

Bernese Mountain Dogs are unfurnished dogs.  No bearding - zilch. They are homozygous recessive ff.  All First generation Bernedoodles will be handed down one f allele from their Bernese parent. 

If you are familiar with a Punnett Square and how it is used to predict the probability of genotype, what I am about to explain will be easy to absorb.  If you are not familiar with how a Punnet Square works here's a link to help get you up to speed: Punnett Square Education

Aussie Mountain Doodles are the result of Australian Shepherd infusion to the Bernese and Poodle/Doodle gene pool. Here we have an example of an F1 Aussiedoodle (Australian Shepherd/Poodle) bred with an F1 Australian Bernedoodle (Bernese Mnt. Dog/Australian Labradoodle). The result are these gorgeous F2 Aussie Mountain Doodles. Note: The "Australian" in Australian Shepherd and Australian Labradoodle have nothing to do with each other and can get a little confusing! This is why it is so important to fully research and understand the background of the crossbred dog you choose!

Genotype and Generations
One of the biggest misconceptions in "doodle-land" (breeders, owners, etc.) is that the higher the generation the better the coat.  This rings true to a degree but often it's not true.  An F1B Bernedoodle that is 3/4 Poodle and 1/4 Bernese can have a varied genotype... to make it simpler I will just work with F and f.  So, an F1B could be FF or Ff.  Ff is the same genotype as an F1.  Factor in the shedding alleles on the Shedding Locus (click here for a tsunami of info on shedding and coat-types) and you can still have a furnished dog that sheds no different than an F1. You can have an F4 with the exact same genome for coat and shedding as an F1... it's all about what genes were inherited by each ancestor and passed along to the next generation.  

Fig. 1: Here we show an F1b (left side) with the same genome as F1s and one of the F3s as well as the High Bernese Content F1s bred by a multi-gen/Bernese pairing. It is a myth that F1b's automatically have "better coats".

Fig. 2: Here we have an example of a lineage with a different genome than Fig. 1. Here there is an F3 that is unfurnished. The Fw furnishings allele has been introduced into the genepool which will result in offspring that are the "weak furnishings" phenotype. This highlights that not all F3s are going to have the same genotype or phenotype.

​Now, when a breeder chooses to breed an F1 dog (Ff) they need to make a decision.  If they breed an Ff dog to another Ff dog, statistically speaking, they are going to end up with 25% of the puppies being ff.  This means the puppies are not furnished and they do not have the fluffy doodle look that their siblings will display.  These puppies are commonly referred to being Unfurnished or IC Affected.  Each parent carried a copy of the Improper Coat (IC) gene (IC is interchangeable with f for unfurnished. Lingo just depends on who you are talking to.  Breeders have a tendency to use the terms associated with IC - IC, Improper Coat, IC affected).  The term Improper Coat originally comes from Portuguese Water Dogs (PWD) that are supposed to be furnished.  When the odd Unfurnished PWD popped up, they were dubbed "improper" as the coat was not compliant with the breed's standard.

Most doodle breeders avoid producing unfurnished puppies as they feel that they defeat the purpose of crossing the breeds for the benefits of the furnished coat-type. It is not common for experienced breeders to breed F1s together as they will have a chance at producing the unfurnished coats. ​When breeding multigeneration dogs, experienced breeders will genetically test their dogs to avoid breeding two IC (f) carriers together as you cannot tell the dogs' genotype simply by looking at them.

So, what is the big deal with unfurnished coats??

In my opinion:  NOTHING!!  Unfurnished puppies are something that is not ideal in the Doodle breeds, but there is nothing wrong with them at all.  In fact, they may be MORE desirable than a furnished doodle, depending on the needs/wants of the family.  I get more comments, when I walk around town with Bernedoodle puppies, that denote many people like the concept of the doodle (temperament, size, more diverse gene pool, etc.) but the coat upkeep with the brushing and grooming requirements are a total turn off.  They don't realize that they can have their cake and eat it too!

There are some trade offs when you are looking at an Unfurnished Doodle.  They usually shed like a "normal dog", but generally (though this is not ever a guarantee) not as intensely as the original parent breed (let's say Bernese Mountain Dog in our case), as there are other Poodle influences at play.  An Unfurnished Doodle does not require dedicated brushing and frequent trips to the groomer. In fact, they don't ever really NEED to see a professional groomer, you can brush them and spot trim them at home easily.  They generally do not get as filthy because they do not possess the kind of coat that is "swiffer-like", grabbing all of the road dirt, mud, burs, sticks, snow, etc.  Their coat may shed, but the overall maintenance is completely different than that of a Furnished Doodle.  Unfurnished Doodles have no muzzle hair which means no smelly, wet, messy beards to keep clean, no hairy ears to pluck (which decreases the risk of ear infections), and no walking into walls because they can't see through their mop of hair!  Furnished Doodles usually require a dedicated grooming schedule or they end up shaved at the groomer because the mats and knotting was too much to overcome.  Unfurnished Doodles do not generally have this problem because they do not have a thick, long, messy coat to upkeep.  Some people want a big, fluffy typical doodle coat and some people simply do not.  Unfurnished Doodles are the answer for those that like doodles, but don't like the grooming chores that come with all that coat! 

So, now you know a little about Unfurnished Doodles.  Moonstruck Bernedoodles breeds for Temperament and Health as priority number one.  This means, that on occasion, we will choose to have a litter that will produce a percentage of Unfurnished Doodle puppies.  If you are interested in an Unfurnished Doodle as a loving addition to your family, please contact us to see if we expect any litters that will have Unfurnished puppies in the litter!