Fur and coat ?

[voodoo]

As Chili is maturing, his coat is changing colors. one example of this if you can tell in the attached photo is his tail? thats the color Chili used to be head to toe...now its a completely different shade than the rest of his body. I have no idea and dont really care too much at this point...but I do always get asked lots of questions so it would be cool if I knew how to answer other than I dont know His coat is getting darker and darker and in splotches.

is this normal with chocolate labs?

[Sue]

He's shedding. That's his undercoat poking through. My Abby (a mature 8 or 9) looks like that right now. Brushing daily helps get rid of that orangey stuff.

[voodoo]

with brushing his coat I have all sorts of brushes...I have a zoom groom, rake, furminator, and a brush with lots of little close together metal bristles(show brush maybe). I use the rake alot cause it grabs gobs of fur, only takes like 3-4 brushes...havent used furminator or the others yet since his shedding. is it ok to brush in both directions? right now I only brush with the grain/coat.

[POPTOP]

Bandit, black, used to get a mahogany color when he was shedding. I use a zoom and a Bamboo brand comb. I would start by combing against the coat to help loosen a little then dive in with the zoom, finishing up with the comb. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, day after day.

[ZoeysMommy]

Zoey has splotches of dark brown on her coat right now especially down her sides, only happens when she is blowing her coat

I brush in both directions with the zoom groom and a soft bristle brush. I don't think I would go against the fur with anything like a shedding blade or furminator though

[ckfalz]

I sometimes go against the fur with my hand a zoom groom or a soft bristle brush to loosen the fur. Sam has been going through an extreme shed (the biggest he's done since I got him and reminding me of my old husky mix). He looked very splotchy but a lot of brushing has been taking care of that as all that undercoat has come out. Now he's shedding the topcoat heavily.

I have noticed that Sam does change color. In the winter he'll be a very dark chocolate and in the summer a lighter chocolate although never as light as some chocolates I've seen. He's definitely been lightening up with this shed. He's also not as shiny as usual right now. His coat isn't dull, just not the extreme shiny that it was.

[JenC]

As labs mature, they will get the longer guard hairs which is the outer coat. Typically it's darker than the under coat or the puppy coat. Could be partially due to shedding and partially due to his adult coat coming in. Just some advice, chocolate coats can burn easily, and you being in NM where it will be sunny and hot, you could end up with an orange dog. Jack spent so much time outside as a pup he was orange at 6 months. You can put conditioner in his coat, either human or dog, the leave in kind. And lots of brushing. I would use a boars bristle brush.

[WhoopsaDaisy]

Bandit, black, used to get a mahogany color when he was shedding. I use a zoom and a Bamboo brand comb. I would start by combing against the coat to help loosen a little then dive in with the zoom, finishing up with the comb. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, day after day.

Daisy's fur had a reddish tint on her snout and on her legs too...I googled it and learned the reddish tint meant that she was shedding. Right now I could comb with the zoom groom for an hour and I'd still get fur it seems like. Swimming helps some.

[Berna]

Cookie was light cream as a pup and his coat darkened as he aged.

[MikeLynn]

I agree with all of the above: shedding when the undercoat can be seen, can "change" the color (my black girls have looked dark brown for a while), then there's the age problem when there are probably permanent changes in pigmentation of the dog's fur and finally the amount and intensity of sunshine the fur is subjected to can also cause changes in color. It's especially easy to see in some yellow and chocolate labs. Blacks are usually pretty stable color-wise, at least mine are, but this is Central Europe