It happens to the best of breeders: A puppy is born with an attribute that doesn’t quite meet the standard. When an Airedale Terrier has a soft and woolly coat that can be quite curly, the pup’s teddy bear appearance can make some people melt. Not the breeder/fancier, however. The breed standard is explicit that the coat should be “hard, dense and wiry, lying straight and close.”
This soft coat is called a “sheep coat” (or lamb’s coat), and some think it’s the result of either a mutated gene, a recessive gene passed on from old English bloodlines, or trait inherited from the breed’s ancestral Otterhound or Black and Tan Terrier, a gene that got past the “sentry-who-keeps-undesired-traits-from-showing-up-in-litters-of-good-breeders.”
An Airedale’s coat was originally designed to come out in the claws of the digging animals he was bred to hunt, a natural defense against predators. Furthermore, soft fluffy coats meant “drag” in the water, and given that the Airedale worked in conjunction with Otterhounds to rid streams and rivers of otters, a soft coat was not to the dog’s advantage. Hunters needed their Airedales to swim efficiently.
In addition to a soft jacket and fluffy legs, sheep-coated Airedales lack top coat, and never lose the black on their ears.
Image: Airedale Terrier puppy by Mary Sparrow Smith
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Sheepcoated Airedales are adorable, but the coat is very prone to matting, so it’s a lot of extra work to care for. The correct coat is very resistant to matting if stripped. Clipping the coat, as is done for many pet Airedales, makes it softer and more likely to mat.