LONG HAIRED PUPS Clarification- We never made breedings to purposely produce long haired pups. However, we knew that the mother of these pups was an obligate carrier of long hair. Because of the quality and scarcity of this line we chose to breed and test breed until we had dogs that did not carry the long hair. All long haired pups were sold on non-breeding contracts. The illustrations below are of four pups from the same breeding. The first litter of 11 pups had one that the owner said grew up to have long hair. We did not see her so don't know what type of coat it was. The second breeding (supposedly to the same stud dog, our bitch was shipped for breeding) produced 12 pups, 5 of which had long hair. We knew that the female carried the gene for long hair because her mother was a long haired dog and could only pass on the recessive gene. The long hair was obvious at a much younger age in the second litter. Could this be because of the cooler weather?
This picture was taken at 5 wks. At that time, it was not possible to be sure that this pup had a long coat but a fuzziness on the ears made us wonder.	The above picture is of a normal coated littermate. This was a mid-summer litter. Most of the pups in this litter matured with thick but short coats.	This picture, taken at 4 weeks, shows an obviously long haired pup. The litter was born in Oct. This litter was raised in cooler temperatures than the mid-summer ones.	Here is a picture of a normal coated littermate. Coats at maturity were fairly short.

Where does the long hair come from? Some guesses can be made but we will never know for sure. The history of the breed is not thoroughly documented but crosses to Irish Water Spaniels were recorded. There were likely crosses to "generic" type water spaniels and spaniel crosses which were described more by type than breed. Hounds were used. Water dogs belonging to Portugese fishermen are also a possibility. DNA testing would likely show more recent undocumented crosses involving Labradors, a breed that can also carry the gene for long hair, and maybe even the occasional Airedale.