Sketching a dog is no easy task, like all animals they seem to perceive you are looking at them even when they are asleep. The result is most sketches are done in the few minutes they lay still while snoozing.
Dogs come in so many different shape and sizes, and present such variety in coats - curly, wavy, wire, short or, like Ollie, soft and wavy with furnishings -, it seems possible to mould them into almost any way we wish. Not always to the benefit of the dog, actually.
Ollie is a miniature Schnauzer, one of many small breeds of dogs. Recently, scientists have started paying close attentions to these wonderful animals, and have been studying the magic in the genetics of such variety.
A study published in Science magazine, in 2007, revealed a single IGF1 haplotype is responsible for size variation in the domestic dog. For further reading: http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Why_Small_Dogs_Are_Small_999.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2789551/
