Drying at Home

I was just chatting with a client today about the gorgeous weather and I mentioned that I finally put away all of the winter coats on Sunday. I would normally feel embarrassed that I had left this little task until June but we have had such bizarre weather this spring that I truly feel I was justified in leaving the parkas in easy reach.

Now however, we are well into the start of summer. Many lucky souls have begun enjoying their pools and sharing the joy with their canine companions. Cottage season has begun, and the dogs are dock diving. Many more folks who would not normally consider bathing their dog in the cooler weather break out the hose and kiddie pool and give it a go in the backyard. Naturally, all of this results in a wet dog, otherwise known as the  friendliest creature on the planet.

It may be that you are a free spirit and the prospect of a soaking wet dog doesn’t trouble you in the least. True, physics is a wonderful thing and a dog can shake a great deal of the water off of its fur but, depending on the type of coat your pet possesses, it can take many hours or even days for the dog to dry completely to the skin. This can be problematic for some breeds, leading to itchiness, hot spots, and bacterial or yeasty, smelly skin infections. It is important to note that matts that are allowed to wet and dry undisturbed also become even tighter and more difficult to remove.

You can speed the drying process by using an absorbent cloth or towel to remove as much water from the coat as possible. I like to use chamois cloths to soak up the water, squeezing them through the fur rather than rubbing. A particularly good type of chamois style cloth is called The Absorber. When the cloth is saturated, wring it out and keep sponging. You will be amazed at how much moisture is removed. I always follow up with a traditional towel dry because I think it is the part of grooming that all dogs enjoy the most. Many dogs love it if I lay the towel out flat and allow them to rub and roll themselves along it. For this reason I usually have two towels, one under the dog and one for towelling off. If you are reluctant to use your good linens on Rover, check out Value Village or the Salvation Army stores for used towels. They might be 70’s chique, but your dogs won’t care.

Air and towel drying is best suited for smooth or short coated dogs. All other coats will require a little mechanical aid to dry properly. A hand-held human hair dryer can be used on many smaller dogs, but you must be extremely careful with the heat settings. Most of those dryers are TOO HOT and I have seen the results of what one careless owner did to their poor dog with a hot hair dryer directed too long in one spot. Use one with a “Cool” button, and use an elastic to hold the button down if your hand gets tired. Keep one hand on the dog beside where you are drying, and do not stay too long in one spot. There can really be no excuse for burning your dog.

If you have a larger, hairier dog, it is possible that your pet will still be damp from its last swim by the time it goes for the next one. If you want to avoid the notorious “Wet Dog Smell” (which is caused by bacteria on the skin, among other things), I would recommend first rinsing your dog after it swims in a pond, lake, or chlorinated swimming pool. If your dog is crate trained, one excellent drying method is to use a large box fan in front of the crate to dry your dog with the volume of air. With a wire crate you could place several fans around and on top of the crate. Simple plastic fans are inexpensive, fairly quiet, and safe, but you should make certain that the cords are out of reach and that your dog is never left alone. Never, ever use a heater or heated dryer for this purpose. My favourite fan to use for this is actually a carpet dryer, used for when you have a flood.

If you are short on time and really need to speed up the drying process, consider using a high-velocity dryer. These dryers “blast” the water off the coat with the force of the air speed. They tend to be a bit noisy but have the advantage of drying the dog right down at the skin. You will need to be careful around the eyes, ears, genitals and backside of the dog. There are reasonably priced high velocity dryers for sale at most big box pet stores. You might also check your shop vacuum to see if it has a blower function. You can use that just as well, but make sure there is no debris in the hose or it will blow out onto your dog.

High velocity dryers can be used on any dog, but your dog may need a gentle introduction to the experience. Use patience and bribery, but be assured that it really isn’t a big deal. My dogs don’t seem worried about it at all.

Retrieving a Lost Dog -- MINE!

Well, November was a month of wild adventure. I dislike adventure intensely. I am a stolid, boring homebody, a blue jeans and yoga pants wearing stick-in-the-mud, and I eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich every single day without getting tired of them.

On the day of my brother’s wedding, when both my husband and I were members of the wedding party, one of our Schipperkes became startled, slipped her collar, and ran away from our friend. She was lost for thirteen days. We were able to get her back only through the enormously stubborn efforts of everyone involved, and the kindness of total strangers.I just wanted to write a quick note about what we did during our search and which strategies worked the best.

Searches

We searched, and searched. We went into backyards, under decks, behind sheds, in open garages and under cars. We braved swamps, parks and ravines. We went out at dusk, full night, noon, and at 4 a.m. We shone flashlights, rattled food dishes, crinkled potato chip bags, called, whistled, and squeaked toys. We walked our other two dogs all over the area until their feet were sore. We drove, in case we were scaring her on foot. We had friends and family, kind strangers, clients who went out with their dogs to attract her, people I haven’t talked to in years out driving around trying to find Cleo.

Try finding a small, black, lightning-fast dog in an area with huge properties, no fencing, hydro fields, ravines, increasing cold, and rain, rain, rain.

We put food out on the property that she ran away from, to the delight of a neighbourhood cat.

We tried hiring a search dog on the third day. This would have been a great idea except that we have three dogs and all of their stuff is stored together. We attempted it anyway. The dog tracked beautifully; sadly, it was one of our other dogs. We simply could not provide a good enough scent article for the search dog to use. I recommend the service. If it had worked it would have saved us a lot of grief. http://www.waggzandwhiskerz.com/Lost-Pet-Services.html

Inform the Internet and the World

I emailed my entire Contact List, everyone we knew on Facebook, placed ads on Kijiji, Craigslist, and any other classified website we could find. We notified the Schipperke club, and the Canadian Kennel Club. We posted on many lost pet sites including:

www.helpinglostpets.com (seems to be hard to get working for some people, but they try to help you)

www.petfinder.com

www.petharbour.com (for Toronto Animal Services updates)

www.petlynx.net

www.fidofinder.com

www.whosyadoggy.com

www.infopet.ca

http://torontolostandfoundpets.blogspot.com/

Many of the people I know are also dog people, and they told all the dog people they knew, and so on and so on. We also emailed all of the humane societies in southern Ontario, and all of the dog walkers in York Region. We telephoned all of the pet stores and veterinarians in the area. We bothered Animal Control repeatedly.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

Our friends made perhaps one million flyers and wallpapered the area with them. Their energy was unreal. We received a call from the Milton Humane Society with an excellent idea. They recommended making signs from foam-core boards, using large black lettering and a simple message (LOST: SMALL BLACK DOG, PH#), and posting them at the major intersections around the area. It was these signs that got us our first phone calls of sightings. Cleo had already left the area we had been searching so intensely.

Traps

Cleo was running from everyone she saw, even at a distance. Very few people were close to her. She was staying near houses though. Once we started to get sightings, it was clear that while she was staying in the area, it was hard to predict where she would be. Since she wouldn’t respond to people, we had to resort to traps. We rented raccoon live traps and placed them on some properties where she had been seen a few times. As far as we can tell, she never went there again. We were stumped.

After a dry spell, we started to get more calls, this time from across the road. Cleo had entered a ravine and went up and down, covering a great deal of distance in a short time. She even entered yards that were fenced, finding tiny rabbit holes to move in and out. We moved the traps, but missed her again.

Finally we got several consistent calls that she was in a neighbourhood only a couple of streets away. One of my clients was even out searching for her and saw her, only to have Cleo run again. She seemed to be staying in a particular circle this time. The next day we had calls that Cleo was on a particular property within the circle that she had visited before. I saw her myself for the first time on that property, from a distance, but she ran. Dad and I set up the raccoon traps and a coyote trap that our friend had been able to borrow. We baited them with Pizza Nova Meat-lovers pizza.

The next morning she was there. My hysteria wasn’t pretty. Cleo was fine, foot pads a bit sore and a spot on her nose where she must have tried to get out of the cage. She didn’t even lose weight.

What We Learned

• Make sure your dog can’t get out of her collar or harness.
• Microchips are only helpful if your dog is caught.
• Cleo is a gentle, friendly, affectionate, cuddly dog who likes regular meals and sleeping under the covers. We would never have predicted that she would be a runner and a hider. You can’t tell what your dog is thinking.
• When you are searching for a lost dog, bring a cell phone and change of clothes, especially shoes and socks.
• The Dollar Store sells great rain ponchos.
• Mud smells funny in swamps.
• Traps work. Dogs like pizza.
• Hope your friends are as determined and resourceful as ours.
• People are, with very few exceptions, very kind and amazing and willing to help.
• Those very few exceptions can help to stiffen your resolve with outrage, just when exhaustion is kicking in.
• Never give up, even though you feel like it’s impossible. Never give up.

Thank you to everyone who helped us or offered to help, whether it was through searching, advice, website help, encouragement, spreading the word, positive thinking and prayers. We are very, very grateful.

Cleo Shedding Update

In case you thought I was exaggerating about Cleo's unholy shedding, here we are with Round Two.

A Comb that Combs

I worked with a young groomer who was struggling to improve her finishing work. She had trouble with her blades snagging when she was using clipper combs or getting a smooth finish when scissoring curly coats, and her straight coats often looked choppy. “Comb up!” I would tell her when she asked me for help, and I would go over with my comb and show her. My comb would catch in the coat, indicating that she needed to comb the coat out more thoroughly before she could proceed.

“But I did,” she insisted. I would go back over the coat again with my comb and show her how to properly comb out and comb up the coat. I was confused because she was a good groomer, not sloppy at all, but she didn’t seem to be able to comb a dog properly. It didn’t make any sense.

One day when I went over to help her, I forgot to grab my comb. “Here, use mine,” she said. I picked hers up from the table and tried to run it through the coat. To my surprise, it sort of slid over the top of the hair instead. No matter what I tried, the comb didn’t seem to, I don’t know, comb! I looked at it closely and it resembled my own in many ways. It was metal, sturdy, with a combination of fine and coarse spaced teeth. Very normal. It just didn’t bloody work!

Since then I have encountered mysterious combs like this a few more times from different manufacturers. There is nothing that outwardly distinguishes them from other combs, but there must be something about the finish. The poor victim who is trying to use the dud comb has no idea that life could be so much easier.

Many people believe that coat care is a one step process and consists of one tool: The Brush. This is incorrect (and often they are using the wrong brush anyway). The brush and the comb are used together, and it is the comb that tells you if you have done a good job. If you can not get a comb through the coat, all the way to the skin, brush and comb again. I like to use a combination comb with fine and widely spaced teeth because I find it to be efficient. The wide teeth are used to find and pick apart matting, and also to fluff the coat. As my combs age the outside teeth on either end bend because of the way I use them to break up a tangle. The fine side of the comb is for finishing, making sure that all the tiny matts are out.

A combination comb can also be used effectively on a shedding dog, and with some coats are more useful than any brush. The coarse side cards through the coat, pulling out the bulk of the undercoat. The fine side can find any thick patches that remain and remove the finer fluff. I offer as Exhibit A, Cleo and the product of three minutes with my combination comb. (Cleo is blowing her coat right now and we will repeat this process every couple of days until she looks like a smooth coated dog. No kidding. Every year, twice a year, she does this and every time I am shocked. My other two don’t do this.)

I highly recommend the Chris Christensen Buttercomb #000. It seems expensive for a comb, but it is very effective and lasts for years. Compare it to your current comb and you will probably switch. Any comb that is comfortable in your hand and effectively passes through the coat will do though, whether it costs $2 or $40. Make sure you can hold it comfortably or you won’t use it and will have wasted your money anyway. I have another comb that looks identical to the Buttercomb but its back is squared off. It makes it very uncomfortable to grasp and gives my hand a cramp. Some cheap plastic handled combs will also break apart leaving you with a handle and an impossible-to-hold-on-to remainder.

Remember when you are combing to stretch the skin of the dog slightly and to support in your hand any matts that you may be trying to break apart. You do not want to yank and pull on the coat of your dog and have them suffer a miserable experience. Brush, and then comb, then repeat. Use the tools together and use them often. You will find it much easier to maintain your dog’s coat.

My Pets

Although I have known groomers who didn’t have any dogs, most of us have multiple pets. I am no exception. Currently our animal family consists of three Schipperkes, a Bengal cat, and a domestic black cat.

“Skipper-what?”

“Schipperkes (skipper-keyes, or shkey-per-keyes).”

Schipperkes are a small, agile, active breed from Belgium, bred to guard the barges and chase vermin. In North America they are black, but in Europe I believe that cream and chocolate are also acceptable. They are double-coated and shed seasonally (one of mine ends up practically bald), hardy and hilarious. Intelligent, expressive, affectionate, and a little bit stubborn, they are little devil dogs that have won our hearts. Our first was sort of an unintentional acquisition but, like Lay’s Potato chips, we found we couldn’t stop with one. Alice is nearly thirteen, our male Vegas is nine, and Cleo is seven.

Growing up without a cat, naturally owning one became one of my fondest desires. Once I left home, I determined that I would have a pure-bred cat of my own. I explored several different breeds, admiring Burmese, Bengals and Maine Coon cats, and finally settling on a Ragdoll. We went to a breeder of gorgeous Ragdolls out in Mississauga. She kindly showed us around her immaculate modern home and introduced us to her small cattery, gamely ignoring the fact that Chris had erupted into monstrous sneezes the moment we passed through the door. He shuffled and snuffled after us, one of her tissue boxes tucked under his arm, until we had to acknowledge that another ten minutes might be the end of him.

“Sometimes people are okay in a house with just one,” the breeder suggested, hopefully.

Chris shook his head at me desperately, and off we went.

I abandoned the thought of a long-haired cat and dragged Chris off to the outskirts of Kingston to visit a breeder of Bengals and Pixie-Bobs. This house was much, much older, and the although the house was clean, the cattery was much larger. Chris was dubious and filled his pockets with Kleenex. We entered the cattery where a litter of fluffy Pixie-Bob kittens had free reign. They all promptly pounced on Chris, climbing his frame like a jungle gym. He was crawling with kittens, and not one sniffle. Amazed, after shaking free the last Pixie-Bob, we introduced him to a few Bengals. No reaction whatsoever. We came home with a gorgeous six month old male, Diego. He is now 9 years old.

A few years ago I had found a stray cat on the street and brought her home. We didn’t find her owners, so we kept her. Jessie was part of our family for a couple of years but she unfortunately had an immune disease and we weren’t able to save her. We all missed her terribly, including Diego who seemed at a loss. After a time we discussed adding another cat, and went to an adoption event at PetsMart “just to look”. We came home with Licorice, a gorgeous black young domestic cat. She and Diego skipped right over the “getting to know you” introduction routine and she made herself right at home.

So our house is full of fun, although Connor is a fan of symmetry and is campaigning for a third cat to make the set. He’s campaigning for a baby sister too, but that isn’t going to happen either.

De-shedding

To me, de-shedding is a fancy technical term for what we used to call brushing. They have several tools and conditioning solutions out now that are supposed to reduce the amount of hair in your home by a significant amount should you follow their program, and in a way this is completely accurate. That is because their program recommends regular bathing and brushing of the dog every two to six weeks. Many dogs who are considered to be high shedding are also otherwise low maintenance and groomers are lucky to see them every three to four months. The tools that are used certainly have their place and card the coat, pulling out undercoat. However they can be very abrasive to the skin, and extreme care must be used not to irritate the dog.

My tricks for de-shedding depend on the coat of the dog, but are fairly simple. For a smooth, short coat, such as a Boxer, Dalmation, or Boston Terrier, I prefer to use another of my secret weapons:

I have tried any number of rubber curry combs over the years. For some reason, the Kong Zoom Groom beats them all, hands down. It is easy to hold, easy to clean, removes a ton of hair (so much that you get a little worried the dog will end up bald - trust me, it won't), and is pretty cheap.

The Kong Zoom Groom also works well on the shorter double coats, such as the German Shepherd or Labrador Retriever. With heavier coats of that type or longer, like Malamutes, Shelties and Collies,  my preference is to slather them in a conditioner that has a bit of silicone in it, let them sit for a bit and then, before rinsing out the conditioner, use a grooming rake (a wide tooth comb that exactly resembles a little rake) to comb out as much of the undercoat as possible. Hopefully you will have groomed your dog more than once a year and this will not be too difficult. If it should be seriously packed in there, you might need professional (grooming) help.

Once you have removed as much of the coat as possible, cleaned out your tub, and rinsed the dog, you will need to get them dry. Many folks at home just let their dogs air dry but, to remove as much hair as you can, I recommend using a High-Velocity dryer. You can find one at any professional grooming supply company, and also at most dog shows. In a pinch, take a look at your Shop-vac. It probably has a blower feature. If it isn't too stinky, you can use that blower as a dryer. Stay away from the eyes, ears, genitals and backside please. An HV dryer will get down to the skin, and loosen all of the remaining undercoat. Once the dog is totally dry, follow up with the rake again, a slicker brush, and possibly a finer comb.

This process will absolutely make a mess. Fortunately, you already have your Shop-vac handy. These suggestions are meant for pet dogs only, so don't do this to your show dog or your handler will kill me.

For those who are concerned about their dog's reaction to the dryer and who are convinced that all dogs live in fear, I leave you with this video of my dogs.