12 moth old Chocolate Lab turning grey

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My puppy recently turned 1.

Health all fine. She started shedding around a month ago, and I'm hoping we're near the end of that.

Many/most of her hairs on her back (I think the top coat) are 50% grey. It's the half of the hair nearest the root. The remainder of these hairs is brown.

The hairs are much more coarse than usual, but I understand that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I've started giving her a small amount of coconut oil as a supplement.

I'm using a furminator practically daily, and most of the hairs coming off with this are the half-grey ones.

I'm taking her to the vets to get spayed on Monday, and will ask then, but if anyone else has experienced this I'd be grateful for any input.

Are you sure it's not her undercoat? That's quite often a greyish colour in dark dogs and it'd be coming up through her top coat is she's currently shedding.

Please be so careful with the furminator which will strip out the thick 'grey' undercoat!

If by 'grey' you mean individual white hairs instadd of brown ones, that can only be genetic, providing the vet thinks there's nothing medical causing this (I've not come across that before).

Most of the coat loss you will see is dark brown individual hairs coating your carpet! but the grey undercoat is a soft down and should definitely not be 'sstripped' out. Just use a moulting glove and strip the longer hairs. Generally they will sstart their moult around belly and flanks first, last long bits on top of shoulders along back/tail and in the summer that will tend to end up looking a lot lighter than the new coat coming through.

If you stand back from your ddog and look at its overall outer colour, is it still chocolate?

She was 2-tone the other day - in her hind quarters definitely much lighter but I was able to remove large clumps of soft hair with my fingers.

The grey is definitely only half of each strand of hair, which I thought might be unusual.

That definitely sounds like her losing her summer undercoat...it collects in what I call fluffy trousers

That's actually a good description.

Totally normal for a Lab. My black lab's undercoat is slightly grey. It comes out in clumps when he is moulting.

Be careful with the furminator. It can wreck the courser guard hairs by cutting them. You would be better off with an undercoat rake or stick a pair of marigolds on and stroke your dog all over.

My choc lab was exactly the same, I thought id never see her fully grown and brown! It all fell out though over the next year, she gets the odd few now, mostly on the underside of her tail

Thanks. That's good to know.