Portrait of breed

Appearance Thai Ridgeback will certainly attract by its imposing and oriental appearance although many people do not know about the breed yet. Anyway, whoever meets this dog will not overlook it. It is a middle-size dog whose athletic body may be described as consisting of very compact, well-balanced body parts. Length of the body is slightly bigger than height at withers (the proportion being 11 to 10). The difference between a dog and a bitch is relatively great. A dog is of 56 - 61 cm of height and 19 - 27 kg of weight while a considerably more slender bitch is 51 - 58 cm tall at withers and 17 - 23 kg heavy. Although Thai Ridgeback has numerous colour varieties, there are only four officially acknowledged colour types: various shades of chestnut, black, blue, and fawn The colour must be pure with an according pigment colour. Its hair is very short, thick and it sometimes feels velvet-like. The high held head draws the most of attention right after the imposing body and charming curves. Its typical features are numerous forehead wrinkles giving its face the oriental and mysterious expression supported by amber coloured eyes of blue and silver variety dogs. The colour of eyes of the remaining colour varieties dogs is dark brown. Another typical feature are big, raised ears turned forward. Thanks to the shape of its head and the mimicking of the face Thai Ridgeback seems to be thinking over something all the time. Another specific feature is the tongue which can be all pink, although the tongue with a varying number of dark spots is preferred. The relatively tall tail is held upwards, or it may be turned sideways in a sickle shape. An important mark of the breed is the ridge at the back formed of the hair growing against the orientation of the rest of hair. The ridge starts right behind the withers and leads to the hip joints. Although other breeds may have this ridge, only Thai and Rhodesian Ridgeback breeds have the ridge prescribed by the standard. While the narrow ridge of Rhodesian Ridgegack must form a fold enclosing two symmetric whirls, the Thai Ridgeback whirls have eight different shape varieties (see at Forms Ridge), but any shape is acceptabe as long as it is symmetrical and well-defined.