Grooming is an essential part of keeping your puppy or dog's skin and coat healthy. Brushing and combing help keep tangles and mats from their coat. It will also help spread natural oils onto their lustrous coat, making your dog look and feel better. The volume and variety of grooming products available can be overwhelming at first, so here is a breakdown of the brushes, combs, and techniques.
The wire brush also called curved teeth brush is primarily for disentangling the hairs, or it may be used for preparing the hairdressing of the dog.
The soft wire brush or the so-called straight teeth brush is at first glance very similar to the hair brushes that are used by the hairdressers and which are used at home. It is used primarily in the case of long haired dogs, provided the fur is not too tangled.
The bristle brush is made from a natural material, and it is primarily prepared from the bristles of wild boar, which are planted into a rubber bed. If is used to comb hairs that are not too tangled and for massaging the skin.
Traditional combs have several types of teeth, one of them is denser, while the other one has rarer teeth, but there are also types that contain two types of teeth densities in a combined manner. Always the toothing has to be selected that is appropriate for the hair type of the given species.
The flea comb is a special tool with a very dense toothing, which was invented primarily against fleas, but they also use it for removing shedding hairs.
The rake-comb called also felt disentangling or hair disentangling rake facilitates the removal of tangles, knots, felty mops in the case of long-haired species. The teeth of the comb consist of sharpened knives, the task of which is to open up hair knots and to remove the needless undercoat.
The rubber gloves are nothing else, but items that may be pulled on the hand that are “equipped” with short rubber spikes, with which we may caress the fur of the short-haired dogs in order to remove the fallen out hairs, and with its aid shedding short furs may be kept in order.
There are many kinds of tools that may be used for trimming. The trimming knife is the most appropriate for stringy and wire haired dogs, for removing the dead hairs. They are available in several variants, with rougher or finer toothing. The appropriate toothing is selected by the dog cosmeticians to suit the part of the body that is to be trimmed. There are cosmeticians, who like to implement trimming by hand, they use rubber fingers, because the hairs stick to these fingers better than to the fingers of the hand, and with their aid, it is easier to remove the dead hairs.
The dog cosmetic scissors may be straight-ended or curved-ended. At the dog cosmetic saloons generally, they use scissors of size 17-18 (this represents the length), although in the case of dogs with larger bodies or in the case of larger areas to be shaved occasionally they use scissors that are bigger. The thinning scissors may have one-side toothing or two-sided toothing, their appearance may be familiar from the hairdressing saloons. These scissors are used for merging the already shaved or trimmed hairs, that is, to achieve a nice overall appearance.
The nail clipper may be scissor type or guillotine variants and they are available in different sizes to match the different dog species.
The smooth-haired and the short-haired species do not need frequent bathing, but it may happen that they have to be also put into the tub, because they became so dirty while playing or on the occasion of a winter excursion. In the case of the dogs of longer hairs, depending on the type of the fur, bathing has to be a frequent activity.
There are many types of hair care products for the dogs, everybody may find the shampoo and the balsam that is appropriate for his demand and budget. There are preparations or oily shampoos recommended expressly for puppies, but there are also shampoos for improving the quality of the hair and that float, improve the fur. Attention has to be paid to put into the shopping cart always preparations that are appropriate for the given hair type. The preparation should be used, diluted as stipulated by the manufacturer.
There are dry shampoos also available, in different variants: in the form of liquids, powders and sprays, for the case when bathing is not ideal due to the type of the hair and in spite of this, the dog dirtied it.
When preparing the dogs for exhibitions they used to use different colouring shampoos (black, white, brown, red), which brighten the basic colour of the fur. A vet may prescribe shampoo for sensitive or diseased skin or he may recommend the using of flea killing shampoos also. In the case of these shampoos, attention has to be paid to strictly observe the instructions.
Balsams are used primarily for long-haired or half-long haired dogs. The preparations have to be also applied with diluting in line with the instructions of the manufacturer, after bathing, that is, on the clean hairs, in order to condition the hairs.
It is practical to purchase lotions for treating the area around the eyes. As I have mentioned before, daily grooming includes the examination of the eyes as well, and if the eyes are phlegmy and gummy, the deposits have to be removed. It is possible to wipe the eyes in seconds with pouring the appropriate lotion on a cotton bud, moreover, in the case of some white-haired dogs (Maltese Silky Dog, White Spitz Dogs, Westies) the yellowish discolouring of the hair may be also avoided with the regular application of the appropriate lotion.
Ear cleaning solutions are also definitely needed, since the same way as our ears, the ears of the dogs have to be also cleaned periodically. The everyday cleaning may be done not only by the dog cosmeticians but by the dog owners as well. It is important to remove the earwax located in the ears each week because the earwax and other dirt in the ears are the sources of all the infections and ear inflammations. We may implement this simple grooming task in a simple manner with using the appropriate ear cleaning lotion and by regularly wiping the external auditory duct.
+ A good advice: always keep blood-stanching powder at home. It may be of great use, when the dog jumps in the course of nail clipping, or if someone cuts more from the nail, and it starts to bleed.
There is a hairdryer in each home. High capacity water removing machine is not needed for home grooming, however, in the cosmetic saloons, we may see such vacuum cleaner shaped devices that speed up and facilitate the drying of the long big-haired species.