Named for the popular corn chips, “Frito feet” smell is a dead giveaway for yeast infection in the feet. The most common paw problem with working dogs tends to be “Frito feet.” Odor-wise, you want to give your dog’s paws a good sniff to see if anything smells amiss. Visually, you are looking for matted hair, abrasions, too-long or jagged nails, split or broken nails, and signs of injury or infection. It is also important to regularly examine your Dutch Shepherd’s feet both visually and with your nose. The three coat types Dutch Shepherds are bred in today are short-hair, long-hair, and wire-hair (rough-coated).ĭutch Shepherds with short hair usually have no problem with excess hair growing between their paw pads and causing problems.īut in Dutch Shepherds with the long hair or wire/rough hair coats, you may find it necessary to trim the longer hair between the paw pads so it won’t get in your dog’s way as they are running and jumping and swimming and staying active. If you are new to the Dutch Shepherd dog breed, you may not realize that these dogs have three different coat types – another nod to the possible intermixing of different breed lines along the way. Luckily, all the activity that a Dutch Shepherd dog needs typically keeps the nails well filed without having to do a lot of clipping for maintenance. The breed standard specifies that the most desirable look for the Dutch Shepherd paws is “oval shape” with arched toes, which places these dogs most closely in the hare feet category.Ĭaring for Your Dutch Shepherd Dog’s FeetĪs a true working dog breed to this day, your Dutch Shepherd dog relies on their feet for everything they do. These feet look a lot like the feet of their wild namesake and produce a “springy” gait that makes these dogs particularly aerodynamic as they spring and jump. Hare feet get their name from their longer middle toes and shorter outer toes. This helps cat footed dogs run steadily for longer distances without fatigue or excess energy drain. When a dog has cat feet, the third toe bone is shortened to keep the toes more even across the foot. Cat feetĬat feet get their name from the shorter, rounded appearance of these dog paws. So it is possible that they may have had true webbed feet in the past. One interesting fact about Dutch Shepherds is that in their early breed days as shepherd dogs, the terrain they worked on was quite sandy. However, Dutch Shepherds as a breed have traditionally worked in herding and livestock guarding rather than as water dogs. You can watch a short video clip of a Dutch Shepherd dog in between puppyhood and adulthood learning to do his first water work. Webbing is particularly useful for dogs that work in the water, which the Dutch Shepherd is perfectly capable of doing. When a dog is said to have webbed feet, this means there is a visible webbing, or a thin layer of skin, that connects each paw pad (toe) to its neighbor.Īll dogs have webbed feet to some degree because there is always a bit of skin that connects one toe to the next.Ī dog is said to have true webbed feet when this area of skin between each toe is quite pronounced. We will take a closer look at each foot type here. What Type of Feet Does the Dutch Shepherd Dog Have?ĭid you know that modern dogs can have three basic types of feet?Īs Mother Nature Network (MNN) points out, dogs can have webbed feet, cat feet, and hare feet.
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