Poodles

      Poodles come in four sizes. Royal (20" or taller at the shoulder), standard (15"-20" tall at the shoulder), miniature (10"-15" tall at the shoulder), toy (10" tall or under at the shoulder).

      All poodles have a hair coat, or a UDL coat (as opposed to fur, see grooming for more details) which is hypoallergenic. There are two types of poodle coats, curly and corded. Both can be cut (referred to as a clip) in a variety of ways that rather dramatically change the look of the poodle. 

      There are three clips recognized by the CKC; puppy, English saddle, and continental. However there are almost infinte ways in which to clip your poodles coat. 

       Any (mostly) solid coat colour is recognized by the CKC as belonging to pure bread poodles. There are in general ten colours; blacks, blues (which are black with silver hairs mixed throughout the coat), greys (mix of white and black hairs throughout the coat), silvers, browns, red, café-au-laits, apricots, creams, and whites.  The CKC also states that Brown,  and café-au-lait Poodles may have brown coloured noses, eye rims and lips, dark toenails and dark amber eyes. Black, blue, grey, silver, red, cream, and white Poodles have black noses, eye rims and lips, and black or self-coloured toenails, and very dark eyes. 

      All poodles go through a process during the first two years of their lives called clearing where their colours change from what they were born with to what they will have for life. In general this difference is a lightening of the colour at birth, though rather dramatic swings are possible. For this reason it is common for puppies to be classified into one colour at birth that is later changed after the coat has cleared. Not all change coat classifications though, and this is referred to as holding.  This clearing process is linked to a gene called the fading gene, which effects all colours except for black. Of note is that there are several patterned colourings for poodles; parti (poodles with two colours, not just multiple shades of the same colour), brindle (a stripy pattern made of two colours), and phantom (a specific pattern of markings in two colours). However these colourations are not recognized by the CKC as pure bred. A puppy will not clear to any of these, poodle puppies are born with the markings they will carry for life. 

      Like most live things what colour the dogs are born is not the entire story their genes can tell, there are recessive and dominant genes. Therefore, knowing the colour of the two dogs that you are breeding does not guarantee the colour of the puppies. With pedigrees and gene tests we can make highly educated guesses to the probability of colours being born to a particular pair of dogs, however we can not be certain as the interactions are complex and we still do not completely understand genes. Another gene name you might come across if colours and breeding interest you is the Rufus gene, which is the gene thought to be responsible for the colour red in poodles.