Shavanese?

If you're this far in the page, you probably know what a Havanese is. If not, I recommend you figure it out first as this can get kinda confusing.

Starting in the 1980s German Havanese breeders started finding strange-coated puppies in litters with regular Havanese. As these strange-coated pups matured, their coats only grew feathering on the skirts, tail, legs, chest, and ears - the rest of the body hair was close lying and, well, smooth. Breeders were baffled. They had never seen this before. They contacted other breeders, who also had smooth puppies appearing infrequently in litters. So, they knew this wasn't some chance genetic mutation in one single litter - this was something carried by all or most Havanese in their genes. Considering all their other litters did not have smoothes in them, it had to be a recessive gene. Right? They named these smooth dogs "Smooth-Coated Havanese" but shortened it "Shavanese."

So they started a breeding program to find out this gene. They picked two unrelated smoothes, but the owner of the male refused. So they found two with the same grandsire. Mrs. Ursula Geipel volunteered to raise the "VK Experiment" litter. The entire litter of four were smooth-coated. They were not used for further breeding - as planned for the pups, regardless of coat type.

Please, don't e-mail me screaming "WHY ARE YOU NAMING A FLAW A NEW BREED????" (yes, I've gotten one). This is what I have read, if you don't agree with it or don't like, just stop reading and don't come back to this page.

To explain how this how genetics thing works, Here are a few charts.

L = the dominant long-haired trait

k = the recessive short-haired trait

So,

LL = a Long-haired Havanese

kk = a Smooth-haired Havanese

Lk/kL = a Long-haired Havanese that carries the Smooth Gene

The Sire is horizontal, the dam is vertical (outside the | line), and offspring are inside the boxes. Each square is approximately 25% of the litter.

PLEASE EXCUSE THE CRUDENESS OF THESE CHARTS!

So, a "clean" sire bred to a carrying dam produces 50% non-gene carrying and 50% carrying offspring.

  L k

So two carriers bred to each other gets 25% of the pups to carrying the gene, 50% carrying, and 25% of the offspring have smooth coats

L k

k k

Two Smoothes without the long gene bred together gets 100% smooth puppies.

L L

Two Longs without the smooth gene bred together gets 100% Long coats.