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

waldor

Well-known member
Sophie's coat looks different from every other Cavalier I have seen, in real life and in photos. I always blow dry and brush with the direction her coat grows, but it always looks as if she has been blow-dried from the tail toward the head.

Would any of you know why her coat does this? Thanks.

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Maybe Cavaliers or dogs are like people....some are "blessed" with cowlicks or weird hair. My son the 12 yr old is growing his hair out to have "cool kid hair" he's been blessed with really thick hair. Now to me he looks like a fuzzy head

Melissa
 
Sophie's coat looks different from every other Cavalier I have seen, in real life and in photos. I always blow dry and brush with the direction her coat grows, but it always looks as if she has been blow-dried from the tail toward the head.

Would any of you know why her coat does this? Thanks.

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Waldor.... maybe she just prefers the "punk" look ! ;)
No..seriously.. I really wouldn't know unless like Melissa said..it is just a cowlick like some people have.
Whatever the reason...she is quite beautiful..regardless of how her hair grows! :)
 
Sometimes it is an indication that something is wrong in that area - muscle tension or similar. Does Sophie have any health issues? Sorry I can't remember.
 
Does Sophie have any health issues?

That is a good question. Her only known health issues are food and environmental allergies, and she has always had the allergies from puppy stage when we bought her at 15-weeks of age.

I looked at her puppy pictures, and her coat lays flat in all of them. In pictures from when she was eighteen months old, most of it lays flat and some of it is starting to curl back toward her head. No health changes at that time. She always gets a clean bill of health at her annual veterinarian checkups.
 
Hopefully it's not that then, maybe something to do with the allergies? In Tellington Touch it is understood that patterns in the hair indicate underlying problems. When my McTimoney chiropractor comes we notice that Kayleigh's coat lies flat after a treatment [from the middle of the back onwards] Around her neck it always stands up, something I have noticed with previous dogs . PLEASE don't think I am saying that that is her problem, would be interested in other's comments on this.
 
Waldor...Soushiruiuma & Nicki are probably better judges at answering this..as I mentioned I have no idea.
But when we had our Golden retreiver..he too had hair that went different directions on his back.
Since we didn't "show" him..it was no big deal to us. We knew he was healthy. He lived till the age of 12 before he developed cancer & passed over rainbow bridge around 8 mo.'s ago.
Anyway..we were told that some golden retreivers bloodline's were bred to have what is called a "field" coat..while others have the long "show" coat. Ours had the long hair ...but it just sort of did it's thing so to speak.
I don't know if perhaps that has anything to do w/ Cavaliers??..but perhaps somewhere down the line?
After all..they were also bred for hunting/field purposes ages ago.
 
Bentley's can be a little like that, he has areas that won't lie flat, he has more of a course wavyish coat than a long drapey coat. His is still not at its full length yet. he will be a year on the 21st
 
My Cambridge has a similiar coat. Sometimes it sticks out more then others. It just seems a bit curly to me. Humidity seems to effect it and as he is getting older, and longer coat, it is not quite so unruly. A good conditioner after his bath helps a lot too.
 
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?
 
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. ;)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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!
 
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. :smile:
 
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