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shedding

judy

Well-known member
Quite suddenly, Zack has begun shedding for the first time. I'm getting lots of white hairs on my clothes and furniture.

I'm wondering if there are ways that others cope with this that you could pass along to me. Are there products that help clean up the hair? I got something called a Furminator, it's comb/blade that thins out the undercoat and removes loose hair and i just started using it night before last--i do thing the shedding is less.

i'm intersted in whatever can be done to minimize the effects of the shedding.
 
Ahhhh! Welcome to the world of cavaliers!!! :D I have two blenheims...at times we have tumble weeds blowing around the family room!! h*lp
Julie and the girls
 
Forest said:
Ahhhh! Welcome to the world of cavaliers!!! :D I have two blenheims...at times we have tumble weeds blowing around the family room!! h*lp
Julie and the girls

:? Do you just not do anything about it? it's worse during warm weather, right? Zack wasn't really shedding until a couple of weeks ago. His hair is getting steadily longer, though it's still not very long. Do you brush them?

I got this tool called The Furminator, it's comb/blade thing, and i started using it on him, and it didn't seem to be doing anything--in the ad, they have pictures of piles of hair coming off the dog, but not much hair came off of Zack on the comb, even though there was a lot of hair on my pants and the furniture and stuff, but after i furminate him, i don't see the shedding for days. then it starts up again and i furminate him again.

i wonder if there are any special hand vacuums or something to get the hair up easily. As it is, i'm not doing anything and it seems not so bad since starting with the furminator.
 
I have not been able to find a Furminator here but I have been using the rubber band in the comb trick that someone suggested and it does help. However, my girls aren't very co-operative when it comes to grooming so that doesn't help. :) Of course I pick it up all the time!! :roll:
Julie and the girls
 
I had one of the glove mitts, which had the rubber come one side and then the other side shined it up - which was quite good, I gave that to Harry Busta's Lab friend as he seems to need it more!!!! At the moment we use a brush with pins in a rubber setting and a soft brush the other side, which seems to work fine.
 
Forest said:
I have not been able to find a Furminator here but I have been using the rubber band in the comb trick that someone suggested and it does help.....Julie and the girls


the rubber band in the comb trick? what's that? :)
 
I gave both my girls a bath yesterday and got out the Zoom Groom. Luckily I brushed them outside - I couldn't believe how much loose hair both of them shed. If I would've had a spinning wheel, I could've make yarn :roll:

Sheri
 
Claire:

A Zoom Groom is a rubber palm sized brush. It seems to "attract" the hair and really pulls out the loose stuff. They come in different colors and retail (here in the states) for under $10. My dogs both love 'um since they don't have any sharp bristles.

Sheri
 
How weird, I posted to this thread this morning and it isn't here. icon_nwunsure If anyone else notices anything like that, let me know!

What I'd said was -- this is almost certainly Zack losing his puppy coat. They tend to 'blow' it, as the terminology goes, when they are getting to around a year old but sometimes younger and sometimes much older.

So a lot of hair will come out then probably not as much again at one time. Cavaliers don't have an undercoat so a tool designed to help thin undercoats probably won't do much. If you twine a rubber band through the teeth of a comb that can help take out loose hair. Or the mitts work, or just brushing well each day. Different brushes are better than others. A soft brush won;t take pout much. I like my boar bristle brush for taking out dead hair but pin slicker brushes are good (mine hate them on their skin though so I can't use them for overall brushing). I use pin brushes with rubberised tips on the pins and that works well too.

Different dogs shed more hair than others generally. Neither of mine are big shedders -- that job goes to the cats in my house!! However I grew up with a Great Pyrenees and a cavalier is never, ever going to come close in the shedding stakes to a pyr; now those are REAL tumbleweeds of hair!! Years after she passed on, my mom would find birds' nests lined with her soft hair which was still into everything out in the garden.

Of course your best tool is going to be :v*cuum:

:lol: :lol:

Judy I'd also be very cautious of using a blade tool. You aren't taking out dead hair, you are actually cutting his hair and thinning his coat with one of those. That may not be what you want to do and it is also easy to overdo it and find you've taken out huge chunks of coat that will take a long time to regrow. A thinning tool is really useful for adult dogs with very heavy coats that people might want to thin out. The Mars Coat King has a thinning tool that lots of cavalier breeders use and recommend them.

Coat King:

http://www.groomersmall.com/coat_kings.htm

People recommend the 16 or 20 for cavaliers. Note they should only be used once a week or two weeks.
 
Thanks for all the info on shedding tools and coping mechanisms. I've looked them up on the web and bookmarked them. Karlin, that is great information, to know a dog will lose his puppy coat--that's probably what has happened. Does it go on for a while, a month or so, or is it a one time flurry? Zack's was really just a rather dramatic sudden one time thing, and it seemed to go away after using the furminator, and then came back in a few days but not as much as before. Now, it seems to be very little, though more than before it started. He really wasn't shedding noticeably at all. The weather is still pretty cool and the cat hasn't started shedding so i wasn't sure if it was seasonal. I never knew puppies shed their puppy coats before. that's good to know.. Someone I asked about this said their dog never sheds and it means that Zack is unhealthy, that it's some kind of health problem. that's just what i need, something to worry about that's really something normal.

I feel well equipped to deal with shedding now. Thanks all!
 
No not health related, they blow their puppy coat and this can be pretty dramatic. Then it can happen as well for various reasons when they get older; stressful situations for example and bitches often lose their coat after having a litter. Most dogs will shed a winter coat going into summer as well. Did you know cat shows tend to happen in winter and spring when cats still have their winter coat as that is much fuller for showing than the summer coat? I never knew this til recently.
 
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