Question:
How often should I groom my dog?

Answer:
Grooming is often underrated by novice dog owners. Experienced dog owners take pride in their dog's appearance, and pay attention to proper grooming. For our purposes, we can divide grooming into bathing, brushing, coat trimming, and nail care.

Every dog needs bathing as some point. One criteria is that the dog should be "huggable." If the dog is too dirty or smelly to hug, it's time for a bath. A good starting formula is to bathe a dog once a month; less often if brushing regularly, and more often if kept outside where the dog lays in dirt.

Inexpensive shampoos tend to have harsher ingredients, and can even cause skin problems. Follow your veterinarian's recommendation, or at least look for a high quality hypoallergenic dog shampoo that contains a coat conditioner.

Brushing and combing removes dead hair, and spreads the natural oil, "sebum" over the coat resulting in a glossy coat. Skin disease often affects sebum production resulting in either underproduction and a dry scaly coat, or overproduction and an oily greasy coat. Both these symptoms indicate a visit to the veterinarian. Possibilities include skin parasites, nutritional problems or allergies among other problems. Gentle stroking with a comb or a brush can also be a bonding experience with a dog. Don't do it in a hurry where you might pull out tangled hair. Take the time to gently untangle, or cut out tangles. Try for daily brushing, but the minimum is once a week.

Some short haired breeds never need coat trimming. Many breeds have continuously growing hair (like people) that require trimming every 4-6 weeks. People very bonded to their pets often schedule pet baths and minor trims every 2 weeks just to keep the coats as huggable as possible.

Nail care is simple in most dogs. Exercise the dog daily until you can't hear the nails "tapping" the floor when the dog walks. Once the nails have grown out, it is more difficult because the nail's central fleshy tissue known as the "quick" grows out to nourish the longer nail. In some cases, the veterinarian will trim back the nails and quick very short under anesthesia. Combine this radical nail trim with an exercise lifestyle change to keep the nails short after healing takes place. A compromise strategy is to trim the nails while the pet is awake, but this is harder than it sounds. It is very easy to accidentally trim the nail too short, clipping the flesh of the quick that easily bleeds and is quite painful. Any dog will then begin to resist nail trims. Many people have their veterinarian or groomer handle this task. The best solution is exercise. Back