Grooming your dog’s hair is an important activity to keep your little furry friend clean and good-looking. Often why, you wonder, bother grooming your furball when his/her coat seems to be okay while you have many other problems to deal with in this increasingly busy life? Although it might look like a chore at first, grooming is more than just swiping your dog’s hair using a brush. Grooming also helps with checking for potential abnormalities. This includes skin problems like ticks, fleas, skin infection, hair loss, suspicious lumps or bumps and many other issues with their teeth, ears, nails, eyes…
When found at early stages, these problems can be treated immediately without having a chance to become more severe. To put it simply, grooming keeps your dog healthy, happy, is an essential part of taking care of your dog, and can potentially save your bills on veterinary. Additionally, it gives you and your dog the time to bond together.
Understand the importance of grooming your dog, choosing a suitable set of groom equipment is the next step.
Dogs have many different hair types, so it is no surprise that there are many different types of dog brushes, combs and clippers available. If your dog has short hair, combs and bristle brushes are probably sufficient. You might want to add flea combs to detect fleas and relieve your little friend from these annoying pests. If your dog has medium to long hair, you might need to have wire pin brushes and slicker brushes. In case you need to cut your dog hair occasionally and you are not trained to use scissors, you should consider getting an electric dog clipper. It should be noted that short-haired breeds do not need to be shaved or clipped, so choose well.
You should remember that dog clippers differ from human clippers, especially in term of blade teeth and clipper strength. Dog clipper’s blade teeth are often designed further from each other, while human clipper’s tend to be closer. Using human clippers on dogs may jam the tool or even make your dog feel uncomfortable, therefore it is not advisable to use human clippers on dogs. The blades are also generally sharper and are made of heavier metal. Dog’s coat is usually thicker than human hair, so dog clippers are designed to have more power than human clippers to cut through even thick clump of hair. Those are the reasons why dog clippers are usually way more expensive than human clippers.
Maintain your tools to avoid spending a fortune on the replacement.
You probably already know it takes an arm and a leg to buy a proper set of groom equipment for your dog, especially dog clippers, so of course you do not want them to be broken anytime soon. Proper maintaining your grooming equipment not only helps you keep your gear work for a longer time and save your money on buying new ones, it also protect your dog from unwanted injuries or infection from old and dirty equipment.
Brushes and combs are pretty easy to maintain: you just need to remove hair from your brushes and combs and clean them after each use to prevent germs or fungi. Maintaining dog clippers requires more steps because they are mechanical and compiled of many different parts, and as mentioned before, dog clippers cost more than most other groom equipment, so let’s focus more on maintaining dog clippers:
- It should be noted first that you should not throw away instructions, because most contain the guide to properly maintain your gear.
- Unplug your dog clippers if they are corded, or remove battery if they are cordless before maintenance for your safety.
- Remember to grease the gear, lever and oil the bearing occasionally to keep them work smoothly.
- Remove the brush caps and examine motor carbon brushes if they work slower than usual or just don’t start. If the brushes are worn out, replace with new ones.
- Brush away hair, dirt from the upper, lower blades, ventilation opening after every use and store the clipper at dry, clean place.
- Occasionally check for loose screws and tighten them, but don’t tighten too much for it might crack your dog clipper.
- If needed, remove the blades to wash. Submerge the blades in blade wash solution, and then lay them on a towel to dry. Once dry, spray the blades with disinfectant to kill off bacteria, fungi, germs and re-assemble the blades into your clipper. Place a few drops of oil between the blades and run the motor to run off excess oil. Turn off the clipper, clean up with paper towel or dry cloth.
- If the blades are worn, remove and send them to the manufacturer or someone who sharpens blades for local groomers to sharpen the blades. If the blades are too old or too worn out, replace them with new ones.
- Drop some oil between the blades every time you use, but do not use excess oil, or you will risk dripping on your dog’s coat and make it dirty.
To summarize,
Understanding the importance of grooming your furry friend and maintaining your groom equipment, especially dog clippers, you should take some time to choose suitable groom equipment, groom your dog, and maintain your groom equipment once in a while to keep them work properly. It might look like a chore at first, but once you get used, you will surely enjoy because of how rewarding it is to you and of course, to your little friend. Go on and groom away!