Home Grooming: The Value of Pet Grooming
The value of pet grooming
Grooming is an important part of the health care of our pets. By grooming, we remove debris from the hair coat which might irritate the skin. Grooming also reduces the presence of airborne allergens that collect on the fur and can bother pets and people. Removing dirt and bacteria helps keep skin and coat clean, lessening the possibility of infections. Most dogs love the touchy-feely nature of grooming, and hands-on contact on a regular basis helps detect abnormalities in early stages.
The act of grooming is a valuable part of our relationship with our pets. Grooming is a nurturing activity, as well as a means wild dogs use of expressing natural pack domination. Through grooming our pets we can bond on a non-verbal level and maintain our rightfully high place in the pack hierarchy. Here are some tips that can help your grooming time be meaningful and effective.
Establish a routine
Dogs especially love a routine. It gives a sense of security, and they feel smart when they know what to expect next. Even if they don’t enjoy every aspect of grooming, they will appreciate the ritual. Establish regularity about your grooming.
Choose a time and place for it. Small dogs can be groomed on almost any flat surface; for slip-proofing, put down some rubberized shelf mat from the supermarket — it also holds the hair so you can roll it up and shake it out afterwards. Keep your grooming tools together in a bag or box so you don’t wander off to fetch a different tool.
Spice the activity up with some of your pet’s favorite treats. Bribery works! Save the playtime for after the groom — don’t let your dog manipulate you out of doing your job. When you are done, give a generous reward of a treat or a short game of fetch.
Choose appropriate tools and products
On thick, long, or curly coats, brushing alone is not enough — you need a metal comb. Brushing gets rid of debris and loosens the fur; the comb separates the hair and removes tangles.
Pin brushes are for show dogs; for average pets the slicker brush gets best results (the kind with tiny bent wires on a rubber pad). For short-coated dogs, a shedding blade or a grooming stone will remove dead hair. Use these tools with short, overlapping strokes.
For best results on all dogs, use a coat spray or leave-in conditioner in a spray bottle, misting lightly as you groom. This removes static electricity from the coat so dead hair can be removed and tangles can relax. In difficulty, spray the troublesome spot directly. On drop-coated dogs such as Lhasas and Shih Tzu, and curly coats like Poodle and Bichon, brushing and combing the coat totally dry can cause breakage and split ends.
Be systematic
This is where dogs and people differ. The dog wants you to groom here and there, jumping around and avoiding the feet. The person knows best results come from a systematic approach, usually working from the back to the front. Work from the feet up, brushing then combing a section at a time. This “layering” means you are always combing into already-groomed hair. Grooming top to bottom sets you up to miss whole areas, especially if the dog moves around a lot.
Know the troublesome areas
Professional groomers recognize places especially likely to hold mats or clumped hair: in and around the flank, the insides of the legs, where the forelegs meet the chest, the lower chest just behind the front legs, behind the ears, around the base of the tail, and in the “armpits.”
If you run into a mat, try slicing it from the skin out. Never cut into a mat or hold the matted fur and cut with scissors at the skin — a sure-fire way to cut your pet! A great mat slicer is a plastic letter opener about the size of a business card with a blade in one corner: draw the big “tooth” through the matted fur and keep dividing it until it can be combed out. This is the “divide and conquer” dematting technique.
Know your limitations
Some pets can be groomed at home by loving owners for their lifetime, but there are times to admit the job is more than you alone can do. That is when it’s time to find a professional groomer.
A groomer has a wide selection of tools, products and techniques to draw from, plus a perfect set-up for the job. The professional has experience with all coat types and has studied a wide span of breed profiles; she or he knows how to scissor-trim so your pet won’t look like it was caught by the lawnmower. You can use your groomer as a backup to your own efforts, or establish yourself as the backup — however much you want to do.
Just don’t wait for the situation to get totally out of hand and expect a grooming miracle. Groomers may have magic hands, but we don’t have magic wands!
About the author
Barbara Bird has been grooming dogs since 1971. She lives and works in Tucson, Arizona, where she has owned Transformation Pet Center since the early 1980s. She became nationally certified in grooming non-sporting breeds, belongs to the National Dog Groomers Association (NDGAA) and the International Society of Canine Cosmetologists (ISCC), has presented seminars to fellow groomers, and enjoys writing on the Internet.