Facts & Fiction

Is the Chinese Crested Dog's temperature hotter than other dogs?

No: The hairless body temperature is the same as any other dog, 101-102 degrees. A veterinarian's thermometer will prove this! The hairless feels hotter because your hand is in direct contact with it's skin.

Does the Chinese Crested Dog get sunburned?

Depends: I live in Florida. My dogs have a dog door to the yard. They play outside in the sun as much as they want. I do not use sun block, sun screen, or sun tan lotion. My dogs, though, all have slate, tan, black, or brown skin on the top part of their bodies. They have pink or white skin under their throat, chest, and belly. Those areas are not constantly exposed to the sun. If my dogs had white or pink skin on top, they would burn unless a sun block was used.

Does the Chinese Crested Dog get cold?

Yes: They like the same temperatures we do. They are very popular in northern U.S.A. and Canada. Though, outside in the winter many people dress them in clothing. I understand they will play in the snow for a short period of time. Having lived in Florida for forty years, I cannot imagine this!

Do Powderpuffs shed?

Yes: All living thing with hair or fur shed. Depending on the length and texture, for some creatures the hair falls out and gets all over stuff (us, furniture, etc.), for other creatures the loose hair tangles and mats among the other hairs (thus requiring brushing). I never brush my dobe or whippets, and their hair gets on everything. I brush my powderpuffs about twice a week removing loose hair before it can cause tangles and mats. A percent of hair or fur is shed daily (look at our own combs), but shedding is increased due to hormone changes, weather temperature changes, stress and health. The closest we can get to no shedding is the natural hairless.

What about the Chinese Crested Dog's teeth?

The hairless gene is connected to the tooth gene. Hairless Cresteds do not have normal dog teeth. Most commonly they have lots of missing teeth. They may keep some puppy teeth for a year or two because they never had adult teeth to push them out. Many times teeth may grow at odd angles. The canines frequently grow forward or out to the side like tusks. It seems to be, but not always, the more natural hairless the dog is the fewer teeth he or she has. Unicorn does not breed from a dog with an undershot or overshot bite. Many people try to cover it by saying, "Oh, it is just the hairless crooked teeth". It is easy to look at the gums and compare the placement of the gums to those of a powderpuff's correct bite. Powderpuff Chinese Crested dog's are required to have normal teeth. That is: a correct scissors or level bite and complete dentition.

When breeding Chinese Cresteds, what percentage of the litter is hairless or powderpuff?

The powderpuff (PP) crested does not contain any hairless genes, though the hairless (HL) contains a hairless gene and a powderpuff gene. The lethal hairless gene is when an embryo gets the HL gene from the father and the HL gene from the mother. This double HL embryo dies at about 4 weeks of gestation and is usually reabsorbed by the mothers body. When breeding HL to HL you have a 25% chance of getting a PP. When breeding a HL to PP, you have a 50% chance of PPs. It does not matter how many generations of HL to HL you breed, as each living HL carries a PP gene. So the odds of getting PPs are always the same...25%, or 50% or 100% if you breed two PPs together.

My dog is going to have her first litter (mine too). I am getting scared, what should I know?

MY WHELPING INFORMATION:

Cresteds can whelp as much as one week early, so one week before the due date, take her to the vet for an X-ray, so you will know how many pups to expect. Also start taking her temp AM and PM. normal temp is 101 When her temp goes to 99 or below, she is going to have pups with in 12 hours.

She will probably want to have them where she normally sleeps. if that is in your bed, then that is where she will want to be. So you put a plastic cover on the bed and put washable towels over it.

She will shiver, shake, pant, pace all at the same time for several hours. that is all normal. Making them shiver and pant at the same time, is the bodies way of creating the process of moving the pups.

Let her move around as much as she wants. the more active she is the faster the pups will move into line. She may ask to go out side often. Put her on leash and take her out. On leash even in a fenced yard as they may dive under a plant or house and not come out. Take a towel out with you as sometimes the first time mothers think they have to poop when actually it is a pup. Many of the first born pups are born outside in my hands.

Where ever the first born is delivered, DO NOT pull it from the mother while the placenta is still inside her. One of you hold the mothers head so she can not grab the pup from you. The other quickly uses the towel to break the sack from the pups face and vigorously wipe its face clean and start on the body. You want to see it turn pink and start to cry. I even pinch their skin to make them cry, as you want air into their lungs.

All the time you are doing this you are trying to work close to her rear and not put any pull on the umbilical cord on the pups stomach or you will cause a hernia. That is why I do not let the mothers clean the pups as they will squirm around pulling at the umbilical cord and damage the pup.

While your cleaning the pup, with your third :-)) hand, you firmly pull the placenta out when the mother has a contraction. Now lift the pup and placenta away from the mother so that you can tie a cord around the umbilical cord about 1/4 to 1/2 " from the belly. Use a thick soft cord like yarn, NOT a thin cord like dental floss or embroidery thread which will slice the cord and cause great bleeding. IT IS WISE TO KEEP A CONTAINER OF BLOOD STOP HANDY IN CASE THE CORD WANTS TO BLEED. TIE MORE STRING IF IT DOES.

Now put the pup on to nurse. The quicker you get them to a nipple the better they are willing to nurse. Let the mother lick it. She may be rougher than you like, but it is finally HER pup!!

I do let the mothers eat two or three placentas as they say they are rich in the hormones that cause their milk to flow. If they eat more than 3, it can make them vomit.

Write down the time the pup was born. Normally you will get a second pup from 5 to 45 min later. After two pups, then there may be a gap of up to two hours before the third pup. After two hours you begin to get concerned. If you know there are more pups, you can call the vet for advise at that time.

Usually every 15 minutes I pick the mother dog up, gently press on her belly from side to side and lay her back down on the opposite side of her body. From one side to the other helps the pups move down the birth canal.

Part way through the process, I offer the mother milk laced with Gator Aide or Power Aide or ice cream, as they get thirsty and tired.

Why should I purchase my Chinese Crested from a reputable breeder and not from the local pet store?

A PRACTICAL THEORY OF GOOD BREEDING AND GENETICS.

THIS I BELIEVE, having bred and shown pure bred dogs for over 54 years, I have read many books on genetics written by serious scholars. You must have a dictionary handy to understand the technical wording. I finally reached a point, where the more I read the less I understood. The following is one of my own theories that has been very successful for me. To begin with,---Let's give each characteristic a color coded marble, then we will have a code which gives us a gene as represented by the respective coded marble. Go back four generations (the number is up to you), break down the good and bad characteristics of each dog and assign a respective code. Do this for the dam you are going to breed and also for the sire you expect to use. You place all the coded marbles on the dam's side in a jar and you place all the coded marbles on the sire's side in a separate jar. Now we are ready for a breeding; to do this breeding we place all the marbles from both jars in a third jar and mix them thoroughly. This mixing of the marbles (genes) from both sire and dam represents a breeding. To represent the whelping, we shake out enough marbles (genes) to make each puppy. Each time you shake out enough genes to make up each puppy; each time you shake out enough genes for a puppy you will get a different combination of genes (marbles).
Since the coded marbles represent the bad characteristics as well as the good; if we have more marbles carrying the good characteristics, the odds are that we will get a puppy with more of the good characteristics; this is why line breeding is a good thing, BUT only if you are truly selective in your breeding specimens. Bare this in mind, if you use specimens with bad faults you will increase the risk that these puppies will have these bad faults as well as future generations. To improve the breed you MUST mate only good specimens.
Genes cannot be mixed like cake mix; a good hairless is one gene while a hairy hairless is a separate gene. If you breed a bad hairless gene back into the system, you are interjecting that bad gene, whereas if you continue to be selective and breed only good quality hairless to good quality hairless or Puffs, you increase the odds on consistently getting good hairless specimens. This procedure applies to good bites and bad bites, good shoulders and bad shoulders and so on with ALL the characteristics that make up a good or bad Crested.
If you use specimens with good characteristics in themselves and their parents and grandparents, it will enhance your chance of getting more of these good characteristics, whether it is line-bred or out-cross breeding; however, with proper line breeding, you have more of the same dogs and this makes the study much easier and with better odds.
Some strains will respond favorably, some will not; this is partly because of the makeup of their gene pool. When you study most of my pedigrees you will occasionally find a complete out breeding with no ancestors in common. In selecting this out-cross, my choice was made by assuring myself both lines were good and regardless of whether the puppies look like the sire's side or the dam's side they should be good puppies. Of course this can only be if there is no major faults in the background of either.
According to the above procedure, if you have a bitch with a lot of faults but say, "but she has such good breeding behind her. She should produce good puppies " HOW CAN THIS BE ? Well, she had to acquire her faults from her parents, grandparents, etc., and when you breed her you are putting her faulty marbles back in the jar to come out later in future generations. We have far to many breeders breeding Cresteds with disqualifying or major faults to come out in future breedings. I have had them say ," but they produce such nice puppies, even though she is 14 inches. Her puppies are always small " What happens to these disqualifying or major faults that are put back into the gene pool for them to come out in the next owners. They are stored in these puppies for the next breeder. The pet breeders are ruining our future generations because they have no concern for standardizing our breed, they are only interested in "CUTE PUPPIES"
This study may seem much too simple, but to me it has a lot of good practical reasoning and produced good results. Think about it! Have you found a study that is more simple to understand. The facts are basic. I believe this one is " Short and Sweet and Hard to Beat " It works for me and has produced a stable and a similarity in my breeding program. Color genetics is a complete and different program.
GOOD BREEDING ETHICS ARE ONLY AS GOOD AS A PERSONS SELF ADMINISTERED CONVICTIONS AND HONESTY.
Joseph L Smith, Regalaire Cresteds

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.
-Ben Williams