Sometimes, timing is everything.

In his 2015 TED talk, Idealab founder, Bill Gross, pointed out how a period of economic market decline in the early 2000s made people reconsider how to make extra money. Home owners who would never have considered renting their houses to strangers now gave it a second thought, and Airbnb, an online marketplace for short-and-long-term vacations, took off.  A year or two earlier, and entities like Airbnb and VCRo might never have become “a thing.”

To our way of thinking, something similar may have happened to the marvelous Weimaraner.

To our knowledge, when the Weimaraner was first recognized by the AKC in 1943,  long-haired Weimaraners were extremely rare. We now know that both parents must carry the recessive gene (FGF5)  responsible for long hair, and this made the coat especially rare at the time of AKC recognition (and even then, not all puppies of a litter will have long hair). Since the variety wasn’t present in significant numbers in the United States, the coat type was not included in the original breed standard, nor is it today. Indeed, a distinctly long coat is a disqualification.  That said, the long-haired Weimaraner is recognized by the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI), the United Kennel Club, the Canadian Kennel Club, and the Kennel Club in the UK.

The long-haired coat variety is not a recent development. In 1934, Ludwig von Merey von Kapos Mere—an Austrian authority on hunting dogs who wrote under the pen name “Hegendorf”—observed a long-haired Weimaraner at a dog show in Vienna. Hegendorf, who prioritized a dog’s versatility and working ability over its coat type, collaborated closely with Otto Stockmeyer, the head of the Austrian Weimaraner Club and Chief of the Department of Forestry in Grafenegg. Influenced by Hegendorf, Stockmeyer persuaded Prince Hans of Ratibor-Hohenlohe to require government-employed hunters and foresters to keep Weimaraners.

Hegendorf also advocated for the long-haired Weimaraner to Maj. Robert Herber, President of the German Weimaraner Club from 1921 to 1946, emphasizing the variety’s value as a hunting dog. This advocacy led to the development of a systematic breeding program for the long-haired Weimaraner in Austria. In 1935, both Germany and Austria officially recognized the long-haired variety, likely acknowledging that the only difference from the short-haired Weimaraner was the coat length.

Despite official recognition, long-haired Weimaraners remain a minority, comprising about 30% of the breed’s population in Germany and Austria, and an even smaller proportion in other countries.

And so, the Weimaraner Club of America is the only Weimaraner club in the world in which the long-haired coat is a disqualifying fault, but the disqualification only applies to a conformation ring. Long-haired Weimaraners can participate in other events open to pointing dogs.

Image: LH Weimaraner by Jonas/AdobeStock