Grooming The Smooth Fox Terrier (2)

Here is the second grooming video featuring Jack's butt and Mimi's tail. I decided to break it into two pieces to make sure it would display on everybody's system.

Here are some helpful hints for keeping it simple:

• Never groom a dirty dog. Dust and grime will dull your knives and scissors.
• Never strip a wet coat.
  
• Good thinning shears are worth every penny you pay. Don't scrimp on this tool.
• A grooming table makes the entire process so much easier.
• Learn how to trim nails. Be patient. Be confident. Be zen. But keep the Clotisol close by in case you fail at patience, confidence, or zen.
• The tail should look like a smooth, even cylinder with a rounded tip when you are finished. Hold your thumb over the end of the tail so you don't nip it with the shears. Better that you cut your thumb than the dog.
  
• Groom outside if you can. Less mess to clean up.

Grooming The Smooth Fox Terrier (1)

As soon as I got sucked into the world of smooth fox terriers, I got sucked into grooming. The coat on these dogs lies tight and flat to their bodies. Nothing shows off a fit, muscular smooth fox terrier like a clean, well groomed coat. I showed in conformation for a while and learned how to groom them up to their eyeballs. A careful show groom on a smooth fox might take as many as 8 hours spread over two or three days and requires an entire box of tools and equipment. You'd think a dog with such a short, smooth coat is a "brush and go" sort of affair. Oh, my, no. Grooming a smooth fox requires shaping and trimming every hair on their bodies. Every single hair.

Fox terriers are double coated, with a coarse, tight outer coat and a much finer under coat. Stripping pulls out the loose guard hairs and thins the under coat, giving them a clean look and greatly reducing shedding. I used to strip with a fancy German stripping knife but I'm all for using the Furminator these days. You can cut the dog's skin and damage their coat just as easily with either tool so stripping knives are not for the total novice. However, the Furminator is very easy to use.

Even as a dog sport competitor, having my dogs show up to a trial looking trim and clean is always important. Because they are not that common of a breed, I wanted my dogs to always look their best every time they went to a tournament or trial. I always groomed my pack before a trial, even the dogs that were just along for the ride!

Grooming your dog yourself gives you a chance to examine the dog closely on a regular basis, allowing you to run your hands over their entire body. Any irregularity shows up quickly. And some aspects of grooming help keep the dog healthy, such as clearing their coat of loose hair.

Once I stopped messing about in the conformation ring, I devolved my grooming routine into something much more simple. Every week I clean their ears, trim their nails, and clean their teeth. Every month or two I strip their coat and trim fuzzy butts and flaggy tails. (I don't worry anymore about the lizard feathers on their necks, even though the neck gets a lot of attention in a show groom.) They get bathed every couple of months unless they are particularly dusty or smell doggy.

Here is the first of two videos on simple grooming of the smooth fox terrier. This one features Mimi. And yes, isn't that a lovely purple smock I'm wearing? If you ever once got itty bitty sharp-tipped fox terrier clippings into a sensitive place, such as, oh, under your sports bra, you too would own this particular fashion accessory.

Summer Molt

I've been finding little clumps of orange hair around the house--Lola is going through a major summer molt. I took the Furminator (a grooming tool whose virtues I've extolled before) to her today. She seemed to enjoy the attention. Here's the result:

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.