Doggy Day Spa

(all that white stuff on the ground is hair...)

Today was grooming day for the fox terriers.

Smooth fox terriers have a short, stiff outer coat and they are supposed to have a soft undercoat as well. Harry and Dyna, my black and whites, have almost no undercoat at all. Jack could double as a yeti--both his outer and undercoats are insanely thick and fluffy. Gracie got her lovely coat from her dam--very nice, very correct. Mimi, Gracie's sister, has some weird, old fashioned, throwback-to-ur-terrier coat. The outer coat is strongly waved, almost like a jheri curl.

The outer coat is dense and the hairs pack together tightly because as working farm and hunting dogs, the breed needed protection from brush and moisture. Because of their tight outer coats, it is extremely difficult to wet the tan and whites to the skin.

Anyway, for fox terriers to look their best, they need regular grooming, something more involved than just a bath or a brush.

All dogs need their nails clipped, their teeth cleaned, and their ears swabbed on a regular basis. I do this every couple of weeks.

But today, in addition to the usual, they all got the doggy day spa special. When you groom a smooth fox, you remove the fur on their butts and necks with electric clippers and thinning shears, you trim off the flaggy hairs from their tails, and you strip their necks and backs. Stripping removes the loose outer hairs and pulls out the undercoat and moves the oils from their skin out along the hair, keeping their skin and coat healthy.

The doggy day spa special takes about half an hour per dog. So I invested almost three hours in grooming my dogs today, including setting up all my equipment, then cleaning it and putting it away afterward. That's nothing, really. I used to show Jack in conformation and it would take about 8 hours over a couple of days to get him ready for the show ring. I used more products on him than I used on myself.


But no longer. These days I go for a basic strip and clip and call it good.

I have all kinds of expensive grooming tools but the most fabulous one of all is the one I acquired after I stopped showing in conformation: the Furminator. This is a stripping knife for Everyman. No show ring snob would be caught dead with one, but it is so easy to use, so incredibly functional. I can pull what seems like a pound of hair off each dog in minutes. And best of all, the dogs just love this thing! A professional stripping knife is extremely sharp and if not pulled through the coat at the correct angle, can cut the coat and even the dog's skin. Instead, the dogs line up at the foot of the grooming table for their turn to be Furminated.

And on a nice day like today, I move the entire affair outside so the dogs lounge around in the sun waiting their turn on the table. It was a wonderful way to spend the afternoon.