Sophie's coat grows in an odd direction (?)

[Margaret C]

Some cavaliers do have a wavy coat which tend to get curlier the older they get. A real problem if they are show dogs but otherwise nothing to worry about.

Cavaliers with dry eye/curly coat are the only exception but they tend to have dry coarse fur, sometimes compared to a Brillo pad, and Sophie looks as if she has soft shiny curls?

[Furrfoot]

I hadn't really paid much attention before, but looking at Rose's coat (she's snoozing next to me in the chair ), since her coat started "growing out"/getting longer, she has some of the backward "cowlick" hair on her shoulders up to the back of her neck, along with other waves all over in the new growth. I just assumed it was part of the process of her hair finally getting long (this just started this month, she's 2 years old). Our Cardigan Corgi had hair like that, too, and his was considered a long non-show coat. The longer Rose's coat gets though, the more it seems to lay down and go the right direction again. It's kind of funny, because her coat used to lay all lovely and smooth, and all of the sudden, as it started getting longer and fuller, she had hair growing every-which-a-way, lol.

[waldor]

Cavaliers with dry eye/curly coat are the only exception but they tend to have dry coarse fur, sometimes compared to a Brillo pad, and Sophie looks as if she has soft shiny curls?

Her hair is soft and shiny enough. Since I don't remember her parents' coats, perhaps this is just her 'normal.' She gets good Omega supplements and her skin isn't as dry as it was when a puppy.

[Phoebe]

Has Sophie been spayed?
My girls coat started to go that way after spaying, in fact the texture of her coat and the way her coat lay, changed quite a bit over a period of several months after her spay.

[waldor]

Phoebe - yes, Sophie was spayed at around 6 to 8 months of age, before her first season. Maybe that has something to do with it, but there are a lot of spayed cavaliers with normal coats. Perhaps it affected her in this way.

[Karlin]

That wouldn't be typical of anything that might happen after neutering -- which sometimes just makes a coat a bit more fluffy or flyaway (easily managed with a good groom and good conditioner for example). But this is limited to just one area.

I'd tend to think that it is just genetic -- an oddity, perhaps for some reason the hair follicles don't face normally? -- if there's no health reason a vet can offer. You could try a drying coat -- many use the lycra coats from K9 coats and leave them on til the dog is dry. That might make it lie flat. Looks like static electricity to me!

[waldor]

Looks like static electricity to me!

I agree, but that's not the case, because she looks like that even in summer's humidity. Bless her heart, she has no clue her coat looks funny and I'm not going to burst her bubble. She thinks she's a little princess anyway.