One of the most genuine of Sweden’s dog breeds, the Swedish Vallhund (sometimes known as the “wolf corgi”) is also one of the most accommodating when it comes to tails – they can be long, docked, stub or bobbed. What is regarded as an essential feature of the breed is the characteristic “harness markings” on the coat,  bands of lighter color running down the sides from the shoulders. While a Vallhund may be a sable pattern seen in colors of grey through red, those lighter and clearly defined harness markings are essential whatever the dog’s color. In fact, we weren’t able to find a breed standard from any registry that doesn’t mention it.

Image of Vallund puppy already showing its harness markings, from Wikicommons and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.