Dog Coats That Require Grooming

Part 1

Grooming the Medium Coat

Another type of coat that is easy to groom is the medium coat. Lots of medium-coated dogs should be left altogether natural without trimming, clipping, or shaping. The medium coat does not tangle, mat, hold on to dirt, or need particular attention other than routine brushing and the occasional bath.

Long hair on the feet should be trimmed, especially between toe pads where mats can quickly form.

Bear in mind that you can make minor adjustments to better the shape of your dog by trimming the head and then the body to balance an uneven dog. Nevertheless, a few medium-coated breeds require special trimming in order to compete in the display ring.

Let us take the 'sporting spaniels' for instance. These dogs have the top third of their ears trimmed with clippers or thinning shears. The ruff on a spaniel's neck can be trimmed to an inch above the breastbone and blended into the shoulders.

Other breeds with medium coats require very little coat trimming. When suitable, you can also make tiny adjustments in shaping the ruff rear furnishings and ear hair. Basically, leave your medium-coated breed in a natural condition, just neatening stray hairs without having to change the dog's outline.

The fundamental rule for medium-coated dogs is to brush frequently to take off shed hair. High-maintenance grooming is not needed.

The necessary tools for grooming the medium coat are as follows:

Pin brush, Coat rake, Hound glove, Shedding comb, Rubber curly brush, and a Blow-dryer with low or cool setting.

Every day, or at least once a week, give your dog a good, thorough brushing. But, during your monthly grooming sessions, you may apply the following steps after giving your dog a bath.

1. Dry the medium coat with a towel. When your dog is entirely dry, have him stand. Step back and take a good look at his outline. Compare it to a picture of a well-groomed show dog of the same breed. Look for long, stray hairs, shaggy areas, or other imbalances.

2. Using a clipper, scissors, or a stripping knife, clip off hairs longer than the ones around them and straighten shaggy outlines that are not supposed to be shaggy.

3. Never clip more than a few hairs without stopping and standing back to check again. If you trim at close range for too long, you can simply overdo the job.

4. Finally, you may spray your dog's coat with a little coat conditioner to keep it resilient and easy to brush.

Dog Coats That Require Grooming

How to Groom a Long Coat

The long coated small breeds are characterized by a particular appealing full fluffiness, as opposed to the parted coat-breeds, which are characterized by long, smooth, flowing hair, which is more akin to long human hair. For this reason, bear this in mind when grooming long-coated small dogs:

Think of the coat sticking out from the body, instead of lying flat against the skin.
When you have finished giving your small dog a bath, below is a step by step procedure on how to groom that long fluffy coat.

1. After drying your dog, blow-dry the long coat to keep it from drying into tangles. With the blow-dryer on cool or low setting, work from the bottom up, using the pin brush or slicker brush to fluff-dry. Divide the hair into sections with the pin brush or slicker brush and hold them out from the body as you blow-dry.

2. Keep the blow-dryer moving over each piece of hair until it is dry, then work your way up. Start with the legs and rear end and work your way up and forward. Keep brushing and fluffing for fullness, keeping the coat free from tangles.

3. Finish by running a metal comb through the coat to make sure that you did not miss a single tangle or snag.

4. With a #10 blade on your electric clipper, shave your dog's anal area to keep it clean and free of long hair and tangles. Be careful not to touch the blade directly on your dog's skin. Another way of keeping this area clean is to clip it neatly with scissors.

5. Depending on the breed or if you like the idea of having your dog's underside free of long hair, with the same #10 blade, shave your dog's abdomen from groin to naval and down the insides of both thighs. Shave with the lay of the hair.

6. Trim between your dog's paw pads with scissors, and if hair covers the feet, trim around the feet so the hair reaches the ground evenly around the paw in a rounded shape.

7 Brush and comb the hair on your dog's head, ears, and face.

8. Stand back and look at the dog's shape. Scissor any stray long hairs without changing the shape of the coat. Just look for uneven, stray areas that stand out after brushing.

9. To finish the dog and take advantage of the coat's fluffiness, spray it with coat conditioner or coat dressing to keep it soft and in place, then brush lightly over the top of the coat to set. Brush from bottom up and from shoulders forward to fluff-the ruff. Fluff the tail, the body, and the chest.