I was wondering whether you can tell if a pups ears are going to stand up before they're actually old enough for them to stand up?

As I've said elsewhere I used to have a Foxy, who had button ears that folded fairly high and had a fairly loose fold - when she tipped her head back, they'd stand up.

You could see that the shape determined where they folded - they were fairly narrow at the bottom and wider in the middle, with more taper and curve from the point about 2/3 up the outside edge, and a 'weakness' to the inside line - it wasn't very straight, as you can see from the first photo.

The second is just to show where they folded in relation to their shape.



Whereas Wal's ears (pricked) have a straighter inner edge and less taper and curve from that outside point to the tip and are much wider at the base.

Wondering if Koolies with non-pricked ears have a diffferent shape to those with pricked ears, so whether you could predict whose would come up or not?

Interesting theory, I'll have to go look at my dogs with pricked & compare to the ones with dropped.

That's a bit of an age old question as far as we are concerned, over the years we have had several litters and there is always someone who wants to know at 6 or 8 weeks are the ears going to stay up? Originally we said yes of course both parents are prick eared but it seems that is not dominant because we had 3 litters from that mating and had offspring with pricked, semi pricked and the theory buster of one up and one down.... The vast majority were pricked though.

well my litter at the moment is from 2 dropped eared parents & the ears across the board are up, down, up down, up down, those that haven't gone up at all are no different in shape really to those that have been wanting to prick.

I wouldn't say though that the dropped ears in the Koolie are a cleanly defined dropped ear, they just seem to squish, loose strength & flop, some relatively clean others their ears look like they slept on them.

Pepper has one very pricked strong ear & her other looks like she slept on it it is dropped & scrunchie.

I think the Koolie's ears are as varied as their types & colours, none of mine have the same ears unlike say the Huskies which are bred to have erect ears 2-3" apart & be shaped a certain way to breed standard.

very interesting and a good question hmmm ?
spice as a pup

spice at 8mths

and spice now 20mths

Quin at 4mths

Quin now

summa as a pup

and summa now

so don't fret about their ears they will do what ever they like you just got to love them for how their ears turn out

But they can be a family resemblance, this is Chauncey (owned by currawong)- Spice's father's, uncle.... the ears are looking a tad similar

yes i would said their ears are very similar. great looking dog but then again he is spice's relation

So perhaps in my question I was neglecting to consider whether the cartledge is strong or not??

The genetics of ear shape do seem complicated.

And I suppose my theory of pricked ears having a relation with working ability will fall on deaf ears. little pun there Ha Ha.

But in my experiance what there is of it, I have found that the majority of my dropped eared Koolies either have no talent or little and make good companions, where as my pricked eared Koolies all work well with confidence even force, just an observation

Just a little side track is Harley related to Chauncey?? here are here puppy and adult I don't think she could make up her mind, one up, one down.

Ummm, don't know, which stud is she from? If she has any Silhouette blood, yes ours are all related on the maternal line. The old dame of the family Yogi (15), is a one up one down. She is a cutie, looks like TJ's Dot line to me but just guessing.

Harely (Turramina Red Pheonix ... I think) comes from Turramina Koolies and is by Silhouette Biff out of Turaminna Skye 2006 year model ... the resemblance is very striking!!

well Biff is Spice's dad so if spice is related so would Harley as they are half siblings.

ooh My lines are begining to look like yours, I must be improving

Ahh one of those doggies registered with a different name to their call name....and there you go you can't pick a koolies line by just looking at it, the register remains very important.

Yes very much related to Chauncey. Another thing I noticed was Mushoz's puppies are grandies of Didgets (full brother to Biff) and some have wavy hair along their backs, that is something ours tend to do also. Mindy our first koolie had those waves.

TJ I'm glad your pricked ear dogs work better as they are my prefence for koolies.

oh so thats where the wrinkly coat comes from LOL!

Harley has a totally different name to her registered name as when she arrived I had no idea of the name that Lorraine had put on her registration papers, I only found out her registered name when I enquired at the Registrar about her papers well after!!

and so she was Harley well before "Turramina Red Pheonix"...and believe me Harley suits her personality just fine.

That's because Digdet is a naughty boy and started his career at 7 months.
I believe this is also a Silhouette influence, Turraminna had the same problem, too keen to get started.

Not complaining, he helped produce some of my best results to date and all with pricked ears though he takes after Yogi with his one ear up, one down.

lovely nature too, gentle and bidable.

With dropped ears being associated with greater neoteny, this is exactly what I would expect.

well i have been a bit slow on this thread. first question does harely work and i would believe that the one ear up and one down comes from biff all the way back to yogi as spice has the tip of one ear down. now TJ summa has both ears tipped and works very hard at being a pain in the butt no she is a good dog when she is sleeping and she works hard with the sheep and was working the beef cattle very well when i got her. summa's mother is the same as spice's (dusty) but different fathers (gundy) Dusty's ear are up and from memory so are gundy's but if you go right back in gundy's lines Shep's ears are down(tipped)so i do believe it is inherited and if we could follow Dusty's family back we would find a tipped dog some were in the past.

Well .... Harley is very, very good at herding Poppie ... but anything else, chooks, cattle, horses ... no she doesn't not even to help out Poppie and Pixie. We took her to a herding school in Townsville and she ran away... But Harley does excel at Obedience and I beleive with her focus she will also excel at agility when we finally set up our club and start training.

So Harley does do somethings right...

how old is Harley now it took spice awhile to find herself and she still has off days now and then but i have learnt not to look at her. if i look no workies but if i just walk around without looking her way at all i am falling over the sheep she has them right against my legs. you have to make the sheep fun to by chasing them your self in around yard and acting a real nong. another way to stir her up onto the sheep is is to tie her up while you and the other dogs play with the sheep let her get really stirred up about you being away from her then get someone to let her off but don't look at her. just make sure you have at least one good working dog handy to bring the sheep back if she scatters them. well it worked to get spice started and that was what counted.

Harley is about 18 months old so maybe she just wants to watch for a while...

spice was about 15/16 mths old when she stopped being scared of the sheep but she is still weary of the cows. it would help if she was around cattle but i have only got 2 sheep and a baby goat is coming next week you guested it i will now try to pick one out that looks like Quin or Ellie i think i will have more luck finding an Ellie look alike then Quin but you never know i could be lucky.