Chinese Crested (Dog) Discussion

Experimental breeding with hairless dogs has been limited in scope, probably because of the expense. Scanning the literature5'7 yielded the following data: matings of hairless to normal coated dogs gave 12 hairless and 8 normal pups; matings of hairless to hairless gave 18 hairless to 9 normal pups; while normal to normal, bred from hairless, gave 11 normal pups. The present observations have greatly augmented the above data. The origin of the Chinese crested is obscure and it is impossible to ascertain if the same hypotrichotic gene is involved. However, the similarity of phenotype and mode of inheritance could imply an identity of kind if not absolute identity.


The Chinese crested dog is naked except for coarse hairs on the face and dome of the head, in the lower part of the legs and tail. The covering on the extremities appears to consist of guard hairs only; the underfur or down hairs are absent. A line of coarse hairs often occurs along the midline of the back but this is held to be a fault in the show ring and breeders are selecting against it. The skin may be either soft and pliable or be thickened by layers of cornified cells. To the human hand, the skin feels distinctly warm. The assortment data are consistent with autosomal dominant monogenic inheritance of the hypotrichosis. Accordingly, the gene is symbolized8 as Hr. Although the observed ratio of hairless to normal pups from matings between Chinese crested individuals does not differ significantly from a 3:1 ratio, the agreement is poor and just fails to be significant. 

The ratio is much closer to the 2:1 ratio to be expected upon the assumption that the homozygous hairless is lethal. One of the reasons for assuming that the homozygous is lethal is that breeders have failed over the years to eliminate the normal haired segregants. Another is the significant difference of mean litter sizes for the mating of Chinese crested to powderpuff versus mating of Chinese crested inter se. The lethality of HrHr probably occurs prenatally since Chinese crested breeders do not seem to be troubled with extraordinary perinatal anomalies, still-births, or death of young pups.

A primary difference between other hairless dogs and the Chinese crested is the greater amount of hair on the extremities of the latter. A feature of the breed is a well developed crown of hair (the "crest"). To enhance the quantity of hair, the gene for long hair (/) has been incorporated into the genotype. The presence of the long haired gene is revealed by the normal •haired segregants, all of which have long hair. Hence, the name of powderpuff for those individuals.


The hair of the Chinese crested may be colored (black, yellow), white with a variable colored spot or completely white, the last two forms predominating. The body skin may be bluish pigmented or mottled with pink areas. The mottled effect is due to either piebald (sP) or extreme-white alleles of the white spotting locus6'8. This is revealed by the white spotted phenotypes of the powderpuff segregants. The body skin may be extensively pigmented even when the hair is completely white. This is consistent with the view that the melanoblasts may populate the dermal layers of the skin without entering the hair follicles if they arrived after the follicles have sufficiently differentiated to become impervious to melanoblasts. It is probable that white spotting in the dog is due to retarded melanoblast migration due either to 1) deficiency of primary melanoblast sites in the neural crest, or 2) to slow migration of the embryonic melanoblasts.

The Chinese crested individual is generally robust and healthy. The only anomaly mentioned by several breeders involved the dentition in that a number of dogs had forward pointing canine teeth. The powderpuff segregants are stated to possess normal dentition.

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