How did my dog end up with a short coat despite having ancestors from long-haired breeds?

Sometimes we see dogs with short coats who have mostly long-haired dogs in their ancestry. This can be surprising for pet parents! 

In most dogs, coat length is controlled by a single gene, called FGF5. Long hair is a recessive trait, which means that a dog much inherit a long-hair gene from each parent in order to have log a hair.  Embark denotes this long hair gene as a “T” allele. A dog much have a result of “TT” to have long hair. 

The Short coat gene is dominant, meaning a dog only needs to inherit one copy of the gene to have a short coat! Embark denotes this with a “G” allele. Results showing either “GG” or “GT” generally have short coats, while “TT” dogs have long coats. If your testing kit includes Traits, you can view your dogs’ genotype for this allele there.

So, what does this mean for your dog? Even if a dog has mostly long-haired breeds in their ancestry, they can still have a short coat as long if they inherited a “G” allele from a parent. 

Have questions? Your MyEmbark account includes information about your dog's sample status, your dog's results, and many other helpful resources. Log in to your account here!