Orlando FL
9310 US-192, Suite 102
Clermont, FL 34714
Nashville TN
1211 Louisville Hwy
Goodlettsville, TN 37072
Single coat, silky, the color of ripe wheat, and a greeting that arrives airborne. Nobody ever taught Irish farm terriers restraint.
Kleber Gama
Blue Sky Puppies exceeded all my expectations! The team was professional and knowledgeable, guiding me every step of the way. I felt very confident in my decision, and the Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier puppy I chose is perfect. Highly recommend!
Kleber Gama
From start to finish, Blue Sky Puppies was amazing! The staff was friendly, informative, and made the puppy selection process easy and stress-free. I’m so excited to welcome my new Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier into my family!
Kacology
I recently purchased a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier named “Kenya” from Blue Sky Puppies, and I couldn’t be happier! Tyshan was incredibly professional and courteous, making the entire process smooth and enjoyable. Kenya is a joy, and I highly recommend Blue Sky Puppies for their exceptional service and quality pets. Thank you, Tyshan!
The Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier is one of the oldest of the Irish terriers and, for most of its history, the least written about. It was the working dog of small farms — the one that watched the yard, moved the cattle down the lane, kept the barn clear of vermin and slept by the fire afterwards. It was never a specialist and it was never a gentleman’s dog. While other breeds were being recorded in stud books, the Wheaten was simply the dog on the farm.
Recognition came late and it came at home. The Irish Kennel Club accepted the breed in 1937, and the story that has travelled with it ever since is that the first Wheatens were shown on St Patrick’s Day. The first of them reached the United States in the 1940s, the American breed club was founded in the 1960s, and the American Kennel Club admitted the Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier to the Terrier group in 1973.
That long stretch as a general-purpose farm dog is still the most useful thing to know about the temperament. A dog that had to move cattle, greet the family and get along with everything else in the yard could not afford to be narrow, and the modern Wheaten is correspondingly broad: steady, friendly, and interested in whatever is going on.
The breed is named for its colour, and the colour is the one thing a Wheaten puppy does not yet have.
Puppies are born dark — deep red, brown, sometimes close to black, usually with a black mask, dark ears and often a dark stripe running down the back. Over the first year that colour begins to lift, and by around two years old the dog has cleared to the shade of ripening wheat the standard asks for, anything from pale beige through gold to a warm reddish tint. Adolescence is the interesting stretch: for months a young Wheaten can be two or three colours at once while the new coat comes through, and the ears often stay darker than the body well into adulthood.
The coat itself is the breed’s other signature, and it is unlike most terriers. It is a single coat — no wiry outer jacket, no dense layer underneath — and it is soft, silky and gently waving, falling in loose curls rather than standing away from the body. Running a hand down an adult Wheaten feels closer to human hair than to anything else in the Terrier group.
An adult male stands about eighteen to nineteen inches at the shoulder and weighs thirty-five to forty pounds. Females run an inch or so shorter and about five pounds lighter. That puts the Wheaten in a genuinely useful bracket — big enough for a long hike, small enough to lift into the back of a car.
Under the coat the dog is square and compact, well muscled through the shoulders and quarters, with more substance than the silhouette suggests. The head is rectangular, the eyes are dark and almond-shaped, and the ears fold forward against the cheek. In the traditional presentation the coat falls over the eyes and the muzzle carries a full beard, which is most of the reason the breed looks like it is smiling at you.
You will hear two coat types discussed. The Irish coat is silkier, thinner and lies closer to the body; the heavier coat, often called the American, is fuller and stands off a little more. Both clear to the same colour and both belong to the same breed. Tails were traditionally docked in the United States and left natural in Ireland, and natural tails have become steadily more common here as well. It is a matter of preference, and it is worth deciding what you like before you go looking.
Owners have a name for the way this breed says hello, and once you have been on the receiving end of it you understand why. A happy Wheaten greets you at face height, front feet off the floor and the whole body involved, and it does this for family, for visitors and for the person reading the water meter. The line the breed club has used for decades is that a Wheaten never met a stranger.
The rest of the temperament comes from the same place. Wheatens are cheerful, confident and steady — a terrier’s spark in an unusually sociable package. They have a long reputation for being good with children, who tend to be exactly the right height for the greeting, and they generally get on well with other dogs and with cats they were raised beside.
They also keep the exuberance longer than most breeds. A Wheaten is a puppy in outlook until well past its second birthday, and a good many of them hold on to a fair share of that outlook for life. It is a large part of the appeal.
If you would rather the greeting arrived with four feet on the ground, teach a sit as the thing that opens the door and pay it every time from the first week. A Wheaten will happily learn that sitting is what makes the greeting happen. It only wants the greeting.
A single coat behaves differently from a double one, and the routine that suits it is short and frequent rather than long and occasional.
A comb through every day or two is the heart of it, and a metal greyhound comb is the tool — a brush on its own slides over the top of a silky coat without reaching the base. Work in sections right down to the skin, giving particular attention behind the ears, under the front legs and around the beard, where the coat is finest. On a puppy this takes three or four minutes. On an adult in full coat, ten to fifteen. Most owners do it in front of the television with the dog lying across their knees.
Then a groomer every couple of months, or a set of clippers at home if you would rather. The show trim keeps the length and blends the outline; a shorter pet trim keeps the same silhouette with far less to comb through. Both are entirely normal, and the coat comes back the same either way.
Baths are occasional, and the beard is worth a wipe after meals, since a Wheaten carries a certain amount of its dinner and most of a bowl of water around in it. Nails every few weeks, teeth brushed as a matter of routine, ears wiped whenever you comb.
Wheatens are bright and they like having something to do, and both of those are true in the way they are true of terriers generally: they will work happily for you when the work is interesting and well paid. Short sessions, good food, plenty of variety, and stopping while the dog still wants more will take you a long way. Drilling the same thing twenty times gets you a Wheaten who wanders off to see what else is happening.
Loose-leash walking is worth teaching properly while the dog is still small, and a recall paid every single time, with something better than kibble, is the investment that keeps paying, because a Wheaten with a reliable recall gets to do more.
The day itself is active without being extreme. Two good walks, a run in a secure space, and something to think about most days keeps an adult content. They are naturals at agility and rally, they take to trick training, and a great many of them will retrieve for as long as anyone is willing to throw. In a Florida or Tennessee summer, walk early and late, keep water and shade to hand, and let the middle of the day belong to a cool floor and a nap.
Evenings are social. A Wheaten wants to be underfoot while dinner is made and on the sofa afterwards, usually with its chin on somebody.
There is no substitute for putting your hand on the coat. A photograph cannot tell you that it is silky rather than wiry, and it certainly cannot prepare you for the greeting. It is also worth seeing that dark puppy colour in person, because it is a stage almost nobody expects.
Our Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier puppies come from our network of licensed breeders, and our team can show you what the comb-through actually involves and how the colour shifts over the first two years. We have a store in Orlando and one in Nashville, and you are welcome to sit on the floor with a puppy before deciding anything. Find directions and hours, and ask about financing while you are here. Every puppy here goes home with its vet records, its vaccination history and a health warranty, and our team will walk you through what those cover.
