Darswed Teckels

I just thought I would write a few words about the different coat types found in Teckels. Over the years the Teckels in the UK seem to have suffered a lot from interbreeding with other breeds, as a result a lot of Teckels in the UK are not what they seem, some "hairy/wiry" KC unregistered dogs are likely to be the result of another breed being introduced fairly recently at some point in the dogs "pedigree".

Bear in mind we are simply discussing coat types here,and most of these dogs were and are perfectly capable when it comes to working abilities.

I have seen very soft haired dogs looking  like teddy bears , and unfortunately it is these type of dogs that some people are assuming are the correct type of coats in Teckels, and they expect this when buying a pup.These are NOT typical coated wire hairs. If you look in Germany for instance a lot of their wire haired dogs are quite smooth coated .

It seems some people are getting confused as to why a smooth looking dog can be called a wire haired dog. Just because they are called Wire haired does not mean they will be hairy as most people tend to think. Wire haired refers to the type of hair, not the length and as a result some wire haired dogs are smooth in appearance, and others are totally opposite and very hairy . Note I use the word appearance, even when smooth to look at the coat should be reasonably coarse and stiff, and certainly not soft and fluffy ! When Teckel pups are born, most pups in the litter may be smooth with the occasional one or two displaying early signs of longer wire hair, these latter pups are the easy ones! And will generally grow up into quite long haired, wire coated adults.

These longer haired pups should be "stripped" at 4-5 months old , using a stripping knife NOT a machine. This early stripping will help the dogs coat to grow in correctly.

The "problem" arises with the smooth looking pups. With some smooth pups staying quite smooth, and some growing into "normals" , (I would regard Aya as being fairly typical of a normal wire hair. And Ib fairly typical as a longer haired wire.)

These 8 week old pups can display varying amounts of facial or body hair at 8 weeks old, but predicting what these pups will be like as adults can be very difficult. We have known pups to continue to change even at two years of age. Some people prefer the smoother wire hairs for working, due to less maintenance of the coats, the longer haired types can need extra grooming in adverse terrain/ conditions etc. Even if both parents are normal or long wire hairs, the resulting pups can be any where in between the smooth and longer haired range. I have found that most normal wire haired pups at 8 weeks tend to have very small but noticeable beard showing, and the hairs on the paws etc may be more pronounced. Take the case of our own bitch Holly and her sister Lola, Both were identical at 6 weeks, then Holly developed a tiny beard at 8 weeks,  she has taken two years to show any signs of her wild boar stripe down her back, and she has a coarse but quite smooth appearance to her coat. She has even darkened in colour noticeably over the past few months! Her sister Lola, has stayed very smooth even into adult hood but still retains her wiriness

  Hence the difficulties in making predictions as to what the adult will look like!

Holly and Lola , litter sisters.