Coat, Ears & Tail

AKC Working Group · No. 55 in 2025

How to identify a Samoyed

The Samoyed is a white Arctic spitz, ranked No. 55 by the AKC in 2025. Its outer coat stands straight out from the body, with a ruff around the head. The lips curl up at the corners into the “Samoyed smile,” and the coat is only white, cream or biscuit.

Photo of a Samoyed
Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Pleple2000 assumed (based on copyright claims). · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Field marks

These four marks are the ones the game gives you as clues. They paraphrase or briefly quote the AKC Samoyed standard.

  1. Pure white, white and biscuit, cream, or all biscuit only
  2. Outer coat “stands straight out from the body,” with a ruff framing the head
  3. Black lips “slightly curved up at the corners” for the “Samoyed smile”
  4. Erect, triangular ears with slightly rounded tips; tail carried over the back

Tell them apart

Samoyed or Great Pyrenees?

Check the coat and the ears. A Samoyed’s outer coat stands straight out from the body, its ears are erect and its lips curl into a smile. A Great Pyrenees has a long, flat coat, small V-shaped ears that hang close to the head and double dewclaws on the hind legs.

Samoyed

Samoyed

  1. Pure white, white and biscuit, cream, or all biscuit only
  2. Outer coat “stands straight out from the body,” with a ruff framing the head
  3. Black lips “slightly curved up at the corners” for the “Samoyed smile”
  4. Erect, triangular ears with slightly rounded tips; tail carried over the back
Great Pyrenees

Great Pyrenees

  1. White or mostly white, sometimes marked with gray, badger, reddish brown or tan on the head, ears and tail
  2. Double dewclaws “on each rear leg”
  3. “Well plumed” tail carried low, or over the back (“making the wheel”) when roused
  4. Small V-shaped ears with rounded tips, carried “low, flat, and close to the head”; long, flat outer coat with a ruff

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