So why did I did I choose the Coton? I wanted a smaller dog than the Dobs, Rotties, and the St. Bernard.  The Akita breed came close in the intelligence and the loyalty that I was looking for but the yearly loss of the undercoat wasn’t something that made the breed friendly to my lifestyle.  Still I miss Brock and think of him often.  The Cairn Terrier and Silky are also wonderful dogs but the hunt instinct is strong in them, which is great for killing spiders in the house.

Which brought me to the Coton, a small intelligent, happy dog that was bred to be a companion to sit quietly on a lap, or at your feet or even across a shoulder.  This dogs do have lots of hair and they do lose it but not in the globs that an Akita does.  Oh, and it’s hair not fur.  I used to get little red spots on my hands after brushing my Akita.  these are the same spots that I get when I brush my cat.  Yes I am slightly allergic to animal dander, which isn’t just the fur but also the saliva and the waste of the animals.  But while I will sneeze when brushing my cat I have no reaction to brushing, bathing or having masses of Coton fur snuggled under my chin when I wake up in the mornings.  I can’t say that no one will have an allergic reaction to a Coton. That would be a lie.  The Coton breed does need nearly daily brushing.  If you keep the hair shorn in the puppy cut then you will cut the work needed to keep the coat groomed in fourths.  If you keep the coat long then you need to check for knots, hidden treasures under the tail, and the odd things they try to stick in their pockets like leaves, twigs, pine cones, and once I even found a slug that had been in the wrong place and the right time. 

One word of warning here - don’t let your Coton in the yard right after you cut the grass.

Yes, her feet are a pastoral green.
But even in puppy cut this is a white dog, with light COTTON like hair.  It needs to be kept clean and it needs to be kept healthy, or you’ll have a rust colored dog with brown shading.  For some reason Cotons have a unique ability to turn their hair brown just by licking it frequently.  And if they don’t lick their own hair they will lick their mates and turn her hair brown.