Coping With Your Long-Haired Dog
Breeds such as the Shetland Sheepdog make truly fantastic pets: they look great, have a naturally playful temperament about them and can also be shown off at shows to mass applause. But the last thing you are likely to see on Crufts is any problem concerning their long hair—in fact, it can be very difficult to work with, and be a ongoing problem that many new dog owners are completely unaware of; grooming can give you a bad back, and can make you regret having such a breed after all.
Here are a number of tips (that I got from Synergy Vets) to help make it that much easier:
1) Never wait months on end without doing any grooming; doing so little and often means it’s that much easier to keep up with.
2) Put your dog on a table or something off the floor for grooming; don’t groom a dog on the floor—it may feel OK at the time, but later on, and with repetition, it’ll slowly begin to hurt a great deal.
3) Be careful about pulling the hair too much; depending on the length of hair it’s usually best to hold it with one hand at the roots, and comb gently through with the other.
4) Just behind the ears often accumulates a lot of dead fur—these can, strange as it sounds, look like physical growths: like extra ears! The longer these are left, the more compact they will become, making it seem as though they belong there. Give them the chop as soon as you see them!
Comments are closed!