Goldie, our gorgeous red cocker spaniel, has a coat which grows super-quickly. We groom Goldie ourselves every 2 to 3 months. Let me tell you why.
There are a few good reasons to groom your dog
It’s too Hot to Wear Fur in Summer
Goldie’s pretty much a winter dog, and her coat is perfectly geared for the colder climates. A long coat like Goldie’s isn’t so well attuned to the hot Australian weather though! Imagine wearing a big fur coat in the middle of a hot, summer’s day. As such, we need to groom Goldie’s fur every 2 to 3 months.
The Flintstone Effect
If you’ve ever watched the Flintstones, you’ll see how they drive. The cars move forward by foot power, and they slip and slide everywhere. Goldie’s fur grows over the pads of her paws, completely covering over time (Have you ever wondered WHY fur grows over the pads of some dog’s paws? It’s because the fur is supposed to protect the pads from snow and ice. Hence, winter dog!). After a while she finds it hard to walk, especially since we have smooth, bamboo tile flooring in our house. Watching her walk with long fur on her paws is like watching a puck flying across an air hockey table. When she runs in the house, she has pump her legs back and forth, just like the Flintstones, and she’ll stay in one place for a bit, before she darts forward. And then when she stops, she ends up sliding an extra couple of metres.
Recently Goldie scared me because she wasn’t able to stand up on her hind legs. That’s actually also the sign of paralysis tick poisoning. she was lying in front of the television, on our bamboo floor, and I saw her struggling to get up. She was able to push up on her fore-legs, but her hind legs were dragging behind. It was as though her hind legs had stopped working completely. I saw that and my heart sank. We do have paralysis ticks where we live, and Goldie had been bitten by one in the past. I knelt down and picked her up, and checked her coat, but couldn’t find a tick anywhere. It took me a while to realize that it was because of the overgrown fur covering her paw pads. Where Goldie was lying down was also a really slippery part of the floor where the varnish had been worn down.
Matting – Reggae Dreads
When Goldie was a puppy, we didn’t groom her for an entire year. Her fur got so long that it became matted, and impossible to brush out. I love Reggae, and I’ve always wanted dreads, but not on my dog! Not to mention, Goldie’s fur is very light and thin, which makes her even more susceptible to matting. Matted fur can house a whole host of creepy crawlies if not dealt with!
Ticks (and fleas) – Ever Present Danger!
Long fur provides an ideal hiding place for nasty ticks and fleas. The process of checking your dog for ticks becomes significantly more time-consuming when dealing with long fur, as ticks can easily blend in.
Equipment
After years of grooming Goldie ourselves, we’ve found the ideal setup. By no means is our setup professional, but we do get pretty good results with it. When we groom her, we are going for any style awards. Our goal is to just trim her heavy fur coat, and make life more comfortable for her.
Grooming Table
We have a heavy duty folding grooming table. It’s made of steel, and has a rubber surface on top to prevent your dog from sliding. The folding legs are very stiff, so they won’t buckle. The table also comes with a vertical strut, from which you can secure your dog to prevent your dog from moving around during grooming. We don’t use this feature very often, because Goldie is usually cooperative. She didn’t used to be cooperative in the past – she’d always wriggle around, growl, and try to get away from the clippers. That’s when we used to tie her to the strut. But now, as she’s aged, she’s become resigned to the grooming, and she realizes that it’s just easier to cooperate.
Wireless Fur Clippers, Blades & Spare Battery
We only use genuine Andis clippers and genuine Andis blades. In the past we used wired clippers. Wired clippers are much cheaper than wireless, and we used wired clippers for many years. Wired clippers also pose many challenges. They make it hard to go around your dog while you’re trimming its fur. The wire gets tangled, and you have a limited range of motion. The wire makes it difficult to get into the paws to trim between the pads. In Goldie’s case, the wire also agitates her, because it dangles around, and rubs against her paws. This meant grooming sessions took much longer than they had to, and were rather stressful.
Once we upgraded to wireless, all of these problems went away. Not having a wire dangling around and restricting your motion is a game changer when grooming! Couple that with a spare battery, and there’s enough to last for a 2 to 3 hour grooming session.
We make sure to use only genuine Andis products. The quality difference is huge. Dog fur is very different to human hair. It’s much finer, and clumps, making it hard for regular clippers to cut through.
Clipper Blade Oil
Because the clipper blades cut at a high rate, they heat up quickly. They get hot to the touch. Not burning hot, but hot enough to be uncomfortable for your dog. Clipper blade oil reduces the friction between the blades, and therefore reduces friction heat. The blades run more efficiently, and they cut better. A much-improved experience for both you and your dog!
Non-slip Mat
Despite the fact that our grooming table has a non-slip rubber surface, we still use a non-stick mat for that extra level of grip. There’s nothing worse than grooming Goldie, with her sliding back and forth! An extra grooming mat helps us avoid that!
Doggy Treats
An indispensable piece of grooming equipment, doggy treats provide that added level of dog cooperation. We reward Goldie with treats every few minutes if she has behaved well during the grooming process. If she misbehaves, then she is told off, and doesn’t get a treat. Tasty rewards go a long way in making grooming a calm, enjoyable process.
Grooming Day
When grooming day comes, Goldie has a sense of what’s happening. She doesn’t enjoy being groomed, and in the past she used to resist it. She’d take one look at the grooming table setup in the dining area, and she’d trot away from me when I’d try to pick her up. I always catch her though. Back when she was more resistant, she’d growl and bark during grooming sessions. I can’t blame her. Standing on top of a metal grooming table whilst this weird annoying, buzzing machine whirs around your body, tugging at your fur, can’t be very enjoyable. But as Goldie has aged, she’s become a lot calmer. It’s almost like she’s a Zen grandma, resigned to the fact that whatever happens, happens, and that it’s easier to just go with the flow.
We start by trimming the fur on her back. All the while, we are talking to Goldie in a soothing voice, telling her that she’s a good girl, and rewarding her for being calm. The easiest parts to trim are her back and stomach, just because they have a large surface area.
Next we trim her head, neck, and ears. The ears are quite challenging to trim, because they are floppy, and we need to be careful not to damage the delicate membranes. Goldie is quite calm during this process. We make sure to groom both the inside, and the outside of her ears. Ears are where ticks can hide, so the less fur the better.
We groom the tail next. Goldie’s tail grows fur like a weed, and when it’s long, and she wags it, she’s able to sweep all kinds of dust from the floor. Whilst this makes for a useful helper for the household cleaning (who doesn’t want an automatic sweeper, right? It sure saves money on buying a Robo Vac) it’s just not good for her to have a tail that gathers dust and bits of food. Yeah. Nasty. We trim her tail to where the fur is very short. After we’ve finished, her tail looks a bit like a kangaroo’s!
Come to think of it, we trim Goldie’s entire coat to where it’s very short. The whole point of grooming her is to help her cool down, and to make it so that ticks and fleas have fewer places to hide.
Lastly, and the most challenging thing, is the paws and legs. Grooming Goldie’s paws takes up at least 50% of the grooming time. Maybe even longer. You need to get into every nook and cranny. Not only that, dogs DO NOT enjoy people messing around with their paws.
Couple that with the buzzing and vibration from the clippers, and it can get very stressful for a dog. It took us years for Goldie to become calm enough during paw grooming to not growl and squirm and yelp.
We trim Goldie’s paws in the “Cocker Feet” style. That’s a term we learned from the groomer we used to take her to (yes, we used to take Goldie to a professional groomer. That’s when we lived in a more populated area. Now we do it ourselves out of necessity. It also saves money).
To achieve the Cocker Feet look (Goldie is an English Cocker Spaniel after all), you need to trim around and between the pads. The pads are exposed in the end, and provide a nice, grippy set of soles, to prevent Goldie from sliding when she walks. It’s called Cocker Feet, but the style isn’t restricted to Cocker Spaniels.
When we’ve finished trimming Goldie’s paws, we give her a final once-over to make sure that we haven’t missed any tufts of fur. Finally, we give Goldie a reward, praise her, and then take her down from the table. I’m sure you’ll agree that after grooming, Goldie looks all smart and pretty! So will your beloved pooch!
Get grooming!
