Lowchen

About the Lowchen

The Lowchen, whose German name means little lion dog, has been shown in the traditional lion trim since at least the sixteenth century, clipped close over the hindquarters with a full mane, cuffs on the forelegs and a plume on the tail. Whether the clip began as fashion or as a way of keeping a bed-warming dog comfortable is unrecorded, but it has defined the breed for four hundred years.

Under the trim is a well-balanced little dog of about 26 to 32 cm with a long, wavy, single coat that comes in any colour and does not shed much. The character is bolder than the appearance suggests: Lowchen are lively, sociable and quite capable of standing up for themselves. A stud should be sound in movement, square in outline and free of the fine-boned fragility sometimes seen in trimmed breeds.

Ask for a patella examination, the usual first question in this size of dog, and for a current eye certificate, as progressive retinal atrophy and cataract have been reported. Hip scores are worth requesting. The breed passed through a very narrow population bottleneck in the twentieth century, which makes the coefficient of inbreeding for a proposed mating a genuinely important number, and worth discussing with the owner before anything else is arranged.

Health & breeding

We check every hip, elbow, eye and DNA result you give us against the Royal Kennel Club’s public records by hand, and we record who checked it and when. The Royal Kennel Club’s public records may not include all the screening a dog has had, so a dog with no Royal Kennel Club record showing is not necessarily untested.