One piece head

My understanding is that a two piece head looks like a tennis ball with a carrot stuck on it. So the dog has a wide skull. not very smooth, and not enough roundness of muzzle to balance it out. When viewed from the top, there is an obvious point where the muzzle ends, and the skull begins.

A one piece head has a smooth transition from muzzle to skull when viewed from the top. I'm sure there is a better definition somewhere.

 

Hmm...

No, I don't think so. I have a bitch with a nice, lean, smooth skull, and a nice round muzzle that melds nicely into that skull. Her eyes are a little wideset, but they are pretty. From above, she has a nice blunt wedge. However, look at her head from the side, and ICK. She has a sliding stop, and she doesn't have the finish of underjaw. The skull is lean from the side, there is not a lot of depth (which is good), but the stop and finish are not great. I'm hoping to fix that in her next litter.

 

I sure would love to see a picture of one. I'm trying to vision a sheltie that looks like that.

 

what ya think?

my wife and i have always looked at prince and thought he had a more "fox" look to him. more narrow look than most shelties we have seen. as you know it does not change the way we feel about him and it doesn't seem to bother him but how would you classify prince's head shape?

 

I think in this photo he is still too young to say whether or not the fox look will continue. They all look like that at the leggy stage. Also Petite dogs, and those of the European Sheltie variety will have a finer face.

I'm still working on the apple and carrot imagery. It's not working for me. Looking down on my pups' heads, Bacca has a narrower skull seems and his muzzle seems to flow evenly towards his skull. Indy has a narrower muzzle but his skull actually looks bigger, so the transition is more dramatic. I don't know which is correct.

Pictures would be helpful.


I looked at Sheltie Talk and it seems to only speak to the length of muzzle and skull in proportion to each other. Not the widths, looking top down.

 

Ember has a 2 piece head. Her skull and muzzle look like they belong to different dogs. One of the reason she is spayed. Actually Diva does too but she is not as bad. Diva looks ok from the side but flares out too much at the cheek level. IMO its her major fault,. We bred Diva because of her body qualites not her head. We tried to correct that when breeding her and so far it looks like we did in Porter(his head is one piece and smooth). I frankly alot of times need to put my hands on the head to tell on some dogs.

I attached 2 pictures that show Ember's head pretty well and then 1 picture of DIva and 1 of Porter. You can see the differnece in their heads. Porter's head is still changing and getting longer and leaner but you can still tell. When you put your hand on Diva and run it back you feel an sudden flare outward, Porter's feels like is one straight line.