The coat

The coat of the Icelandic Sheepdog is a double coat, thick and extremely weather resistant and repels water. The texture of the coat should not be very soft, but rather coarse.

It is often an advantage that the coat has the self-cleaning property, especially in muddy weather. The mud falls off easily, and the dog remains clean.

The hair can have two variants: short-haired and long-haired. In the FCI breeding standard, it states:

"Short-haired: The outer coat is fairly coarse, with a thick, soft
undercoat. The hair is shorter on the face, top of head, ears and front
of legs. It is longer on the neck, chest and back of thighs. The tail is
bushy and the hair length is in proportion to the coat.

Long-haired: The outer coat is longer and fairly coarse, with a thick,
soft undercoat. The hair is shorter on the face, top of head, ears and
front of legs. It is longer behind the ears, on the neck, withers, chest
and back of thighs and with fringes on the back of the forelegs.
The tail is very bushy and the hair length is in proportion to the coat."

Short-haired Icelandic Sheepdogs are less common than long-haired ones.

It is sometimes said that short-haired dogs receive worse evaluations at shows than their long-haired counterparts. 
Many people find long-haired dogs more beautiful, but of course, taste varies. 
Short-haired dogs are often referred to as the "old type." I once heard an elderly farmer say that farmers preferred short-haired dogs because snow doesn’t stick to them as much. Long-haired dogs, so called "Lubbar" sometimes had to have snowballs clipped out of their coats, as they were too difficult to manage.

In my experience, however, a long-haired dog with coarse coat texture, like my own dog Sómi, never has problems in the snow—nothing ever sticks. On the other hand, my dog Hraundís has a softer-textured coat, and sometimes snow clumps on her paws.

It is very important to preserve both coat types in the breed.

I’ve read an interesting discussion by an American woman, Scotti Harvey, who kindly gave me permission to refer to her post. She writes:

“As we attempt to preserve our working coats that protect our dogs in rugged terrain and Nordic climates, taking a peek at the population genetics can be an eye-opener.

On my first trip to Iceland, I was warned that breeding long to long coats could change the structure of the coat. That it was important to preserve the short coat in order to protect the quality of the longer coats.”

Scotti encourages the genetic testing of more dogs to better understand where we stand in our efforts to maintain both coat types. Research conducted so far suggests that the proportion of long-haired dogs is so dominant that we may be close to losing the short-haired ones from the gene pool.

Although I myself have long-haired dogs, I always admire the short-haired ones and hope that breeders will actively work to preserve this coat type.

I’m including a photo of a beautiful short-haired dog from Denmark, Nicu. The photo was taken by Blebea.photography.