Briards are not a "shedding" breed. Briards have hair. The Briard coat does not shed off the body and fly around your house and clothes the way seasonally shedding coats do. I have heard that some families of Briards “blow” their undercoat seasonally. I have not observed this in any of the Briards I have owned which came from 3 distinctly different lines. Instead, my dogs have lost a bit of undercoat on a regular baisis. Ocassionally I will find a little clumps or hair but rest assured this is nothing like living with a German Shorthair Pointer, Shepherd, or, for that matter, any of the other dogs I have owned.
The outer coat is coarse, hard and dry (making a dry rasping sound between the fingers). Some have described it as goat-like in texture. I do not have goats. I can tell you, however, that when I had the hair from two differrent briards spun into yarn by two different spinners, both spinners commented that the hair reminded them of goat. The skeins in the photo to the right were spun from brushings collected over a three-year period.