How to Take a Road Trip with Your Dog
Have you ever tried to explain to your dog that “Are we there yet?” is a phrase best left to the kids? Taking a road trip with your pup can be one…
One of the supposed advantages of having a doodle is that you don’t have dog hair all over the house. And I’ll admit, that’s pretty nice. I don’t have to vacuum up piles of Jazz hair from the floor or use a lint roller every time I leave the house.
But the tradeoff is grooming.
The hair that isn’t landing on my furniture can stay caught in her coat. If I don’t keep up with brushing, it tangles with the surrounding hair and can eventually turn into mats. So while someone with a Labrador or Golden Retriever may be wondering how one dog can possibly produce that much loose fur, I’m trying to figure out how Jazz managed to grow a piece of felt behind her ear since Tuesday.
Which got me wondering: If Jazz supposedly doesn’t shed, where does all that old hair actually go?
Turns out, the answer explains a lot about why different
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I’ve always heard people say that Poodles and doodles have “hair” instead of fur. It sounds like one of those things we’ve all repeated often enough that nobody thinks to ask what it actually means.
Hair and fur are both made of keratin. The more useful difference is how they grow.
Dogs we usually think of as having fur tend to have coats with a shorter growth cycle. The hair grows to its genetically determined length, stops and eventually sheds as it is replaced. Sometimes a lot of it gets replaced.
If you’ve ever lived with a serious shedder, you know the evidence is not difficult to find. It’s on the sofa. It’s in the car. It’s attached to the black pants you weren’t even wearing when you hugged the dog.
Poodles have a much longer active growth phase. Their hair can keep growing for a very long time, which explains why Jazz gets haircuts and the Labrador down the street doesn’t.
But here’s the part that finally made the doodle grooming problem click for me.
Poodles and many doodles still lose hair. Their curly coats are simply very good at holding onto it.
So Jazz isn’t necessarily producing less grooming work than a shedding dog. She’s just storing hers for me.
How thoughtful.
Then there’s the dog whose undercoat seems determined to leave home all at once.
Many familiar shedding breeds have double coats. There’s an outer layer of longer guard hairs and a softer, denser undercoat beneath it. The outer coat helps protect the skin from dirt, water and the environment. The undercoat provides insulation and often does a lot of the dramatic seasonal shedding.
This is where an undercoat tool starts to make sense.
The FURminator Undercoat deShedding Tool is designed to remove loose undercoat on
The SleekEZ Original Grooming Tool approaches shedding differently and can remove loose hair, dirt and dander from a range of shedding coats.
Neither one solves Jazz’s main problem.
She isn’t depositing her grooming problem on my sofa.
She’s carrying it around with her.
And while we’re talking about double coats, shaving one down for summer generally isn’t the shortcut it might seem to be. Those two layers serve a purpose, and grooming experts generally advise against routinely shaving healthy double-coated
Here’s where anyone hoping for a simple answer is going to be disappointed.
There is no single doodle coat.
Goldendoodles can have straighter coats, loose waves, curls or something that seems to have invented itself overnight. They can shed noticeably or very little. Some have an undercoat. Coat traits depend on what they inherited, which means another Goldendoodle’s grooming routine isn’t automatically the right routine for Jazz.
That also explains why I think the phrase “doodles don’t shed” has caused a fair amount of trouble.
A new doodle owner hears doesn’t shed and quite reasonably thinks less grooming.
Then six months later they’re having a very uncomfortable conversation with a groomer about shaving Fluffy.
Low shedding does not mean low maintenance.
In fact, the very thing people love about these coats can create the problem. Loose hair that doesn’t fall away can stay tangled among the growing hairs. Add some friction behind the ears, under the collar, in the armpits or around the legs, and you’ve got the beginnings of a mat.
Jazz doesn’t leave much hair around my house.
I still have to get it out of her.
After looking at approximately nine million grooming products, I’ve become convinced that doodle grooming doesn’t require an arsenal.
For Jazz, the basic job is surprisingly simple.
I need a slicker brush that can actually reach into her coat instead of making the top half-inch look fabulous while trouble develops underneath. That’s why I chose the Lainorzm Doodle Slicker Brush. It has longer pins and is designed for thick, curly and wavy coats like those found on Poodles, Goldendoodles and Labradoodles.
Then I need a metal comb.
That’s it.
The Andis Steel Grooming Comb may be the least exciting-looking thing in the grooming aisle, which is probably part of why I like it. It has coarse and fine teeth, and its job is basically to tell on me.
After I brush a section of Jazz, I run the comb through it from near the skin outward.
If the comb glides through, I’m done.
If it stops, I’m not.
The slicker does the brushing. The comb tells you whether you’re done.
That matters because doodle coats can be deceptive. You can brush across the surface, admire your beautiful fluffy dog and completely miss what’s happening underneath.
I know. Rude.
This is also why I line brush Jazz. Instead of brushing randomly over the whole dog, I work through small sections so I know I’m reaching the entire coat. If you’ve never done it, I have a separate guide on How to Line Brush Your Doodle that shows how the technique works.
I also think we need to give ourselves permission to stop sometimes.
If I find a small tangle while I’m brushing Jazz and can gently work through it without pulling on her skin, fine.
A tight mat is different.
Once hair is densely matted against the skin, I’m no longer interested in proving my grooming abilities. Repeatedly yanking at it hurts. And cutting at a mat with scissors can be dangerous because the dog’s skin can get pulled up inside the mat where it’s very difficult to see. Veterinary guidance specifically recommends clippers rather than scissors when a mat must be removed and professional help for severe or extensive matting.
That’s groomer territory.
This is one of the reasons I’m so fond of that boring metal comb. It finds trouble while the trouble is still manageable.
I’d much rather have the comb stop on Tuesday than have the groomer explain the consequences three weeks later.
None of this is exclusively a dog problem.
Cats have different coat types too. Some shed enough to create a new cat every week. Long-haired
The principle is the same: groom the coat that’s actually on the animal.
That may mean a smaller slicker, a cat-specific deshedding tool or a metal comb appropriate for the cat’s size and coat. What works beautifully on a 70-pound Golden Retriever isn’t automatically a brilliant idea for a ten-pound cat.
This sounds obvious when you say it out loud.
The pet-product aisle does not always make it feel obvious.
Not every dirty dog needs a bath.
Sometimes it’s muddy paws. Sometimes it’s a dusty coat. Sometimes it’s the rear end. And sometimes your dog comes inside carrying something you can’t identify but definitely don’t want transferred to the furniture.
That’s where pet grooming wipes earn their keep.
I’ve been a fan of Earth Rated products for a while. I buy their enormous boxes of poop bags, and I’ve been impressed with how well their toys hold up to strong chewers. I haven’t personally used their grooming wipes yet, but the brand has earned enough credibility with me that I took a closer look at them.
The Earth Rated XL Pet Wipes are made for quick cleanups of paws, body and bum between baths. The XL wipes are about 11 by 12 inches, which sounds considerably more useful to me than trying to clean an entire Jazz with something the size of a cocktail napkin. The unscented version is hypoallergenic, dermatologist-tested and free of alcohol and parabens. Earth Rated also says its grooming wipes can be used on both
They’re not a substitute for a bath when your dog genuinely needs one.
They’re for all those occasions when the dog is approximately 12 percent dirty.
And apparently 12 percent dirty is a very common condition.
Jazz is pretty cooperative about grooming, but cooperation has limits.
Mine does too.
I’d rather brush her more frequently for shorter periods than wait until we’ve got enough tangles to turn Saturday afternoon into an event.
I sometimes use Life’s Abundance Bath Fresh Mist while brushing because a little extra slip can make the coat easier to work through. It isn’t a miracle detangler and it isn’t going to dissolve a mat. It just makes routine brushing a little easier.
And I’m not above bribery.
A Woof Pupsicle can give a dog something else to think about during grooming or serve as a reward afterward. I’m fairly certain Jazz doesn’t care whether we call this “positive reinforcement” or “payment for services rendered.”
She knows the arrangement.
People understandably want to know which dog brush is best.
After living with different kinds of
What’s your dog’s coat doing?
Is loose undercoat coming out by the handful? Is shed hair getting trapped inside curls? Are tangles forming close to the skin even though the dog looks brushed on top?
Once you know what problem you’re actually trying to solve, choosing the tool gets a whole lot easier.
And that finally answered my original question about Jazz.
Her hair didn’t disappear.
It didn’t somehow stop being shed because she’s a doodle.
A fair amount of it was apparently just waiting in there for me to come looking for it.
My friends with shedding
I’m not convinced either of us got the better deal.
But at least now we know why.
Meet The Author:
Amy Rockwell
