07/15/2025
We caught this sweet moment between Dr. Morikami and one of Bellini’s pups! This little one is a 6-week-old Chinese Crested Dog. Though this breed is known by most people for being hairless, they can also be coated (known as “powderpuff”)!
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The powerderpuff variety was actually the origin of Chinese Crested breed. A spontaneous mutation resulted in the hairless phenotype that we know today.
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Coat type is determined by a single gene. This gene has two alleles (versions) and each parent contributes one of their two alleles to offspring. The hairless allele of this gene is notated as “Hr” while the coated allele is notated as “hr”. The hairless allele is incompletely dominant - even though it is dominant, receiving Hr from just one parent rather than both results in incomplete expression of that dominant gene. The result is called an “intermediate phenotype” and is the reason “hairless” CCDs are not actually completely hairless. Additionally, many of these dogs get show cuts and are shaved to fit the show standard. In reality, every hairless CCD has a different amount of hair!
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Receiving Hr from BOTH parents (“HrHr”) is lethal in utero and offspring with this genotype never make it past the embryonic stage. This means that ALL hairless CCDs are heterozygous dominant (“Hrhr”) and only have one copy of the hairless allele.
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Because the powederpuff allele, hr, is recessive, offspring MUST have two copies for that phenotype to be expressed. As such, all powderpuff CCDs have the genotype “hrhr”. This means that a mating between two powederpuffs will result in a litter with only powerderpuff puppies.
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Breeding a hairless to another hairless means that each puppy conceived has a 25% chance of receiving Hr from both parents (HrHr, lethal), a 50% chance of receiving Hr from one and hr from the other (Hrhr, Hairless), and a 25% chance of receiving hr from both parents (hrhr, powderpuff).
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