Dog Grooming Hints

by Barboni

Is a scam? This online downloadable guide, also known as The Secrets to Easy Dog Grooming, shows dog owners how to specially groom their pet dogs the right way to keep them feeling happy and healthy while saving lots of money. Proper and regular dog grooming is very important as it will greatly affect the well being, the development and the beauty of your dog.

The process of grooming needs to be done regularly and will involve several different areas that each requires different tools and methods. The main areas will include washing and bathing, clipping its toenails and claws, brushing their teeth, cleaning their ears and brushing and combing its coat.

After every grooming session, you should make it a point to reward them with a treat to encourage their good behavior. This is a very simple tip that will help make your dog like grooming even more. There are a couple of accessories you will need to properly groom your dog, such as clipper combs and blades and accessories, flea combs, nail clippers, combs, brushes, knot removers, dirt and debris removers, knot removers, undercoat hair remover and coat stimulator. Grooming is a great chance for you to bond with your pet and doing it yourself allows you to save a lot of money.

It is important to regular bath your dog to keep his or her fur coat shiny and healthy. Besides that, it also helps to get rid of ticks and pleas that frequently affect pets. Regularly brushing your dog’s fur coat followed by using a comb can help to control shedding as well.

As an owner of border collies for over 30 years one of the best characteristics is their ease of care. Unlike a poodle or afghan hound or bichon – all beautiful dogs – the border collie’s grooming needs are minimal. Minimal does not mean non-existant however.

Basic grooming of any dog is needed and the border collie is no different. Learn to keep toenails in proper condition, flea and tick control and an occasional hard “recreational bone” to keep teeth in good condition.

The border collie, due to a working heritage, has several coats available within the breed. A smooth coat is “wash and wear” – sometimes an undercoat will need extra care to pull out when shedding but most of the time this is the easiest of coats to care for. There’s the medium coat or rough coat and beyond that a long coat, with most of these show dogs that sometimes are almost a sheltie coat. These do take extra grooming but most people are not maintaining show dogs.

Regular brushing to keep the coat in condition is all most border collies need. Whether this is weekly, a couple times per month or more often depends on the dog and activity. Many take a dip in a pool or lake and refresh themselves naturally. Regular brushing keeps the coat clear but get your hands on your dog every day. Regularly check his teeth and ears and keep them clean.

This lets you feel and catch problems before they become major issues. This was illustrated last spring when a smooth 3/4 border collie “felt” strange. She acted normal but when petting her it felt like there was “bubble wrap” under her skin, and as a few hours passed she “crinkled” when petted. A trip to the vet first thing in the morning revealed no cuts as ‘normally’ present according to the vet, but what it was diagnosed as was a bacterial infection that could have been life threatening if unchecked. As it was, she was on antibiotics for 10 days tucked in bites of hot dogs and as far as she knew she was just getting extra treats! Hands on is important and this is just one example of it saving in the long run.

This also lets you notice fleas, skin issues and other problems while they are new and easily treated. Because of the ease of care of these dogs regular brushing and trimming nails are the biggest grooming you will have. Do keep a parasite program in place, natural or otherwise and remember border collies can be sensitive to Ivomectin products. If you’ve ever seen a healthy dog drop and go into a seizure you won’t forget it…watch what you treat your border collie with.

The border collie grooming schedule is best done quickly and frequently and doesn’t take a great deal of time but does need done!

Grooming a Blue or Red Heeler is a simple and pleasurable task as their weather-resistant coat requires only basic care.

The Blue Heeler, also known as the Australian Cattle dog or the Queensland Heeler, has two layers to its coat: a thick, downy, under-layer, and a thin, straight top-coat. A de-sexed Heeler will generally shed part of its under-coat twice a year, while a breeding female will shed after each cycle.

Regular brushing with a stiff bristled brush will speed up the shedding, which can come out in clumps that resemble staples of wool.

The Heelers coat is resistant to weather and so needs little washing; a few baths a year is plenty. Heelers love swimming and allowing them this opportunity for super exercise has the additional benefit of freshening up the fur and removing the dust, while leaving the important natural oils on the fur and skin.

When your dog does need a wash, choose a low-allergen dog shampoo and be sure that it is completely rinsed. Don’t use conditioners as this disturbs the process of their natural oil production.

If your dog lives inside, you will need to clip its toenails regularly; about once a month. This job is also easy. Buy good quality clippers that include a nail-guard, which prevents you from cutting the nail too short. Make sure your clippers are sharp for a quick, clean snip. If you haven’t seen this done before, it’s a good idea to ask your vet to show you how. You need to avoid the “quick” within the nail as cutting it will hurt your dog and the bleeding can be difficult to stop.

Dogs that live outdoors and do a lot of their walking on hard surfaces, such as footpaths, may need their nails clipped a little less often.

One point to note with Blue Heelers: basic obedience is vital for this breed, particularly if living in a domestic situation, as it has been bred as a farm-dog, built to work hard and take orders.

If your dog is given no job or is dominant in your relationship, then grooming, or any other task, will be a nightmare.

It’s just as well then, that Heelers are so intelligent and easy to train. Basic obedience classes are a must and are enough for some owners. Others, though, on seeing how agile and easily taught their dogs are, are keen to exercise their intelligence further by enrolling them in classes for agility training, at which Heelers truly excel, search and rescue training, or tracking.

All of these are great for Heelers as they need a lot of exercise and should be walked for at least an hour each day. They need a large yard and should never be kept in an apartment. A frustrated Heeler is liable to nip at your heels. If your dog is doing this, it is out of desperation: give it something to do and it will stop trying to herd sheep, the job it is bred for.

Just as well they’re easy to groom, huh?

Grooming is an important task to ensure the health of your dog, and trimming the dog’s nails should be part of your regular grooming routine. Nails that have been left too long can cause irreversible damage to the structure of the dog’s foot and cause a lifetime of pain as the toes are forced into an unnatural position to accommodate the pressure from the floor on the bottom of the nails. To ensure that your dog’s feet are kept in good condition, clipping the nails once a month would be a good rule of thumb. If you hear the dog’s toenails clicking on a hard floor when the dog walks, it is a good sign that the dog’s nails are too long.

When beginning to trim your dog’s nails, it is best to start with the front left foot, and work toe by toe until you have completed that foot. Starting from left to right (or vice versa) will help you remember which ones you have cut, and which ones still need to be cut.

Firmly but gently hold the foot with the underside facing up in order to expose the underside of the nails. By looking from underneath, you can see the underside of the nail and this will help you determine where to cut. On the front legs, that will entail gently pulling the dog’s leg back and turning the paw so that you can see the underside. On the back legs, you can simply pick the foot up from behind to see the underside.

The nail grows around a “quick,” which is the living part of the nail. It is important to cut down close to the quick for the shortest length, without cutting into the quick. A good way to determine where the quick begins is to look at the nail from the underside, and if you see that the nail looks hollow, you can safely cut down to the solid middle part. The quick will look like a dark spot in the center of the nail when viewed from the bottom. If you do not see a hollow middle, take little slivers off, rather than larger cuts until you get close to the quick. The quick will bleed if it is cut into. For this reason, have some styptic powder within reach in case of an accidental cut into the quick. Flour or ashes from the fireplace can work to help stop bleeding if styptic powder is not available.

It is best to start handling the feet of a puppy when they are very young so that they will become accustomed to having their feet touched. This will make nail trimming much easier as the puppy grows older.

Taking over your dog’s grooming can be very rewarding. It not only saves you money, but more importantly provides another means for bonding with your pet and helps to keep your pet healthy.

Tips on Great Pyrenees Grooming

The Great Pyrenees is a beautiful and majestic dog. Known as the “Gentle Giant,” these large breed dogs are favored by both farmers looking for a dog to defend their livestock, as well as families looking for a guardian dog that is gentle with children.

Grooming a Great Pyrenees however, can be a difficult endeavor. The Great Pyrenees is a great cold weather dog, with it’s thick long fur, but can also live well in warmer conditions as well. Given the fact that these dogs do have such thick and long fur however, they do require consistent grooming to keep them in good health.

Grooming for a Great Pyrenees should cover it’s entire body. From inside their ears down to their toenails, the Great Pyrenees requires grooming that encompasses their entire body. Fortunately, even though they are such a large dog, proper grooming requires no more than 30 minutes or so a week, with longer grooming processes about once a month or so.

Tips for Grooming a Great Pyrenees’ Coat

At first glance, many people think that maintaining the coat of a Great Pyrenees would be a difficult job. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The Pyrenees has a coat which is naturally tangle resistant, and is considered to be “self-cleaning” in the sense that their fur has a unique, natural ability to shed dirt on it’s own.

Even so, your Pyrenees’ coat will require some help from you, in order to keep it looking it’s best. Weekly brushing with a wire card brush will help to remove loose hair and debris from the dog, and help keep their coat smooth. During shedding season, you may want to brush with a special brush designed to move the undercoat, however it is important to keep in mind that you do not want to brush too often, because this can cause hair breakage for the dog.

As with any dog, you don’t want to bathe your Pyrenees too much, because this removes beneficial and natural oils from the dogs coat. When you do bathe your Pyrenees, use a gentle shampoo, such as baby shampoo, to help prevent the removal of these oils. You should bathe your dog no more than once a month, and make sure to properly dry and brush him after their bath.

It is interesting to note, that Pyrenees often do end up with mats of fur behind their ears. This usually comes from people petting them on their heads and behind their ears. The oils from our skin get transferred onto the dogs fur, and causes it to mat. To prevent this from occurring, simply sprinkle a little