# Grooming Stuff



## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

A while back I had a guy follow me outside a pet store to ask me where I take my dogs to be groomed. I felt bad telling him I do all that myself + I couldn't even recommend any place for him to take his dogs. And this happened again today at the vet with somebody looking at my one boy (who to be fair is coming off a show weekend) and asking where they can go to get their goldens groomed.

Here’s my opinion:

Goldens are NOT a boutique professional grooming needs type breed. There's nothing about their coats or the way they should be groomed per breed standard that requires extra work. This is a basic grooming breed. You DO need to know how to groom it and having the right supplies makes the job easy. 

With a golden, the following 10 points apply. And I’ll explain the uses/process.

1. Bathe your dog at least every couple months. You can buy a handheld showerhead for your shower, if you don't have one. It's a necessity while owning dogs because there will be times when they get some stomach virus or food/anxiety reaction which has them just messing up their trousers really bad. Woe on you if you have to figure out how to wash that poop out of their trousers in winter using just a cereal bowl. The showerhead costs about $30 for a decent kind from Target and it’s pretty easy to install. The one I have here at the house has an 8 ft hose which lets me get both ends of my dog without yanking too much on the fixture. That shower head hangs back up for when people are hopping in there in the morning to take a shower. You can get a cheaper shampoo from the petstore to bathe your dog. They aren’t that great and some of them smell pretty funky. But it’s a good start. However, I would purchase $20-30 shampoo online from places like Pure Paws which makes really good quality shampoos that smell good. &#55357;&#56841; 

2. Get a good pair of thinning shears with at least 42 teeth. Look at spending about $80. Geib makes a base model, but it’s only 40 teeth, which might be close enough? I dunno???? I use Kenchi 5 Stars which are more mid-range at around $130. That’s on the cheaper end. There’s $200-300+ types out there which people get and go nuts about having, but quite honestly, I do not use thinning shears enough to qualify spending that much money on them.

3. Get a $30 Mars Coat King Stripper (20 blades is about right). With a dog with a spay coat and/or getting up in age and growing extra thick and heavy manes, this tool is the one you will be using even more than thinning shears. 

4. Get a stripping knife at some point. Hauptner Stripping "fine" knives sell for about $20 on Amazon. 

5. Get a $9 pair of ConairPro shears. They stay sharp for a long time. These are going to be a go-to for “mowing the lawn” around the feet. You can get a more expensive pair of shears (preferably a 5-6” inch pair with very point tips) down the road, but for pet grooming you just need a pair that stays sharp.

6. Get a decent pair of 7 or 8" shears. Dubl Duck Mercedes is OK at about $60. This will only be used on the edge of the ears. Nowhere else. Well, I suppose you can use around the feet (but I don’t believe they stay sharp the same way the ConairPros do).

7. Get relatively decent clippers from your petstore or online (probably better prices online). You want something that charges. The smaller the blade, the better. Wahl makes a mini figura clipper that sells for about $70. This will only be used on the bottoms of your dog’s feet. The smaller the blade, the more you can do with these, including some shaping of the foot (along the bottom of the foot, going around the outer edge of the pads).

8. Get a grooming table. 24x36. Spend between $70 and about $140. You don't NEEEEEEEED one, because pet grooming is going to be more basic and less time spent nitpicking over stray hairs sticking to the sides of toenails that you are trying to eradicate, but it's easier to trim feet when the dogs are elevated so you can bend over and look closely at feet without rubbing your face into the carpet. 

9. Toenail clippers or grinders whatever you want and or have a routine of taking your dog in to the vet or pet store to get the nails trimmed every month to keep them under control. You do not have to trim every week which is what handlers and show people do with dogs being shown. But you do want to stay up on keeping the nails clipped, especially with older dogs. Those buggers grow fast and make for a big pain when you trim the toe-fur and have all these ugly long nails suddenly emerging from the weeds. 

10. You knew this was coming…. Get a dryer. If you just have 1-2 dogs and bathe once every couple months, you do NOT need a $400-500+ dryer. Because that's just crazy. LOL. You just need one that is at least $120. B-Air sells good enough quality dryers at the lower end price of right around $120. Takes longer to dry the dog compared to a K9III. But a B-Air dryer is AMAZINGLY FAST AND USEFUL when compared to your standard Con-Air hair dryer which does NOTHING when trying to dry your dog’s darn thick coat.  

11. OK. There was an extra point. Get the right accessories for grooming a golden retriever. 

Doesn't matter where you get pin brushes from. They will all do the same job. Cheaper ones from petstores lose pins left and right though. Believe you can get a $20+ pair from big name show grooming companies like CC which won't lose pins, but's up to you. I'd just want a basic pin brush. Whatever. 

Slicker brush - you will need for trimming feet. Doesn't matter where you buy or what you spend. Slickers are slickers. But it's going to be your main brush for all over your dog. It's a must needs brush if you live somewhere where the dogs run and pick up insane clumps of burrs even though you swore you made the rounds out there and pulled up and BURNED all the burr bushes. :surprise: The burrs brush right out with the slicker brush. Sometimes if tightly tangled in the feather, you will have to gently tug the feathering this way and that before brushing the burrs out. But, yass, must need. 

Greyhound metal comb - or decent similar kind. This is useful for getting burrs out. The finer tooth side also can get ticks out if you can't find the tweezer. 



Ending Note: Look at pictures, but don’t feel intimidated like OMG I need to somehow make my dog’s foot look like THAT. Based on what I’ve seen coming out of some Pet Store groomers, you are going to ace that without any difficulty.

Explanation posts to follow. I decided to break this up into focal points.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

*You are Bathing your dog, You are NOT a Spa-Meister*

:laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh::laugh:

OK. Have to admit this was bubbling up to the surface after standing in line at a dog show waiting for a chick who had a mostly hairless dog to finish bathing him. 

I swear. She took like 1/2 an hour. 

In the same amount of time it took her to bathe her dog, 5 people had cycled in and out with the other tub! :|

And the worst part was by the time I got up there to bathe Bertie, I was shooting horrified looks that woman's way because the water was freezing. Like literally, ice in the pipes freezing. And she was putting that poor dog through that for so long. :frown2:

Rule of thumb just like with people...

Warm/hot water increasing shedding.

Coolish or slightly warm water is usually what people aim for when bathing dogs that they want growing coat. 

You are just giving your dog a bath. It doesn't have to be the neverending book version of grooming. 

Get him wet - take about 20-30 seconds running the water over the back, belly, front, butt, and legs of your dog. 

Squeeze a glob of shampoo into the back, front, belly, butt, feathering off your dog. Scrub it in to the skin. Takes about 30 seconds to a minute doing all of that. 

And then rinse your dog off. Use the horse-bathing trick of using your fingers and hand to make sure you are rinsing deep and rubbing the soap/water right off your dog with your hand flat going down the back. Depending on how good you are at rinsing - this will just take a couple minutes. No biggee.

Bathing is a hands on job with golden retrievers, primarily because everything will flow off the top coat without getting in deep where the dog is actually dirty. 

Let your dog hop out of the tub, shake off, and towel dry really well.

Your next step after that if you have a dryer is popping your dog up onto the table and spending the next 1/2 hour to 45 minutes drying your dog.

Force dryers work by blowing the water out of the coat. It also blows all loose hair out of the coats, so there's that benefit if you did use very warm water. 

Best way to dry your dog is blow the coat backwards (from rear to end), blowing out all of the loose water from the coat until you aren't spraying water anymore. That's the point where you change directions and blow the coat back the way it's supposed to lay. 

You do this on the sides/ribcage and hips/shoulders of your dog - blow until no more water's spraying out. And then blow back the other way. 

This is repeated again and again until the coat is completely dry.

I typically completely dry one side of the dog before switching to the other side. So basically I dry my dog one side at a time. 

And then front legs and back legs (not the feathers on the front legs) are dried the same way. Blow back the opposite way to blow all the wet stuff out of the coat. And then blow straight down.

Butt is done next. I don't worry too much about the tail beyond getting the top to middle tail blown dry. The feathers will dry on their own when your dog gets off the table and goes tail-wagging away. So you don't have to fuss to much there.

Pin brush comes out for brushing the trousers, front leg feathers, belly, and front of your dog. This is because you are NOT blowing up and down in these areas. You will just be blowing the coat straight down to the floor. Blowing too many directions on the long feathers just messes up the coat and causes tangles. It's like you sticking your head out your car window. Your hair will become a big mess. :grin2:

Have a set routine and tackle each area efficiently - you will get done drying within 30-45 minutes very easily, even just using that $120 dryer.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

*Trimming feet and tail*

I think this is the part that a lot of people overthink and overdo... 

I would personally do this in three different sessions not just because it's easier on the dog, but it also ensures you are not trying to do too much all at once.

First session - trim the toenails. I never do this on grooming tables because my dogs hate having their nails done and I don't want any of that getting mixed up with me trimming their toefur when I want them to stand very still and keep their feet planted on the table. 

Second session - use the clippers to clean out the excess fur that grows under the feet. It's not too crazy for some of the dogs who don't get trimmed often enough to get like 1/2 an inch or more of this long thick stuff coming out from between the pads, the back of the pads, and growing out beyond the nails on top. You can use shears to do all this trimming, but clippers save a lot of time if you have a steady hand and a dog who doesn't yank his feet too much. 

I don't dig too much BETWEEN the pads. I just use the clippers right up and tight to the pads. Once you get all the stuff coming out from between the pads cleaned up, you can start tugging fur down between the toes so it's coming through between the pads on the bottom - and use the clippers on that. You will repeat that for all the fur you can stuff between the toes and have it reach below enough for you trim off. 

Other thing is I use the clippers to shave what would be like a "bridle path" (meaning you can trim pretty close) with horses from the back of the big pad at the back of the foot and going up just a little bit. I do this for all the feet. And then stop and send the dog off to play and save the rest of the clean up for another day.

Third Session: Take your cheap pair of shears and slicker brush and settle in to clean up the feet. 

The first thing I do is brush the fur up backwards with the slicker. I aim the shears on a slight angle and trim at the point between every couple toes (so there are 3 cuts to do). You can see diagrams of this on the morningsage tutorial, I believe. 

Then the next thing you do is brush the fur back down and begin trimming along the edge of the foot. Use the edge of the pad as a guide. 

You can trim up as tight to the nails as you want. 

Main thing is you do not want your dog's foot looking like a hound's foot or a hare's foot. Golden retrievers, you want their feet looking like fat cat paws.  You are just cleaning up all the rough stuff around the foot. You don't have to fuss too much. 

If you think about it, you just want to trim back up to the natural shape of your dog's foot and remove the bulk from around the edges of the foot. A lot of us really try to avoid removing the bulk from the "top" of the foot. If you do, then use thinning shears very selectively/minimally.

To finish, I would use the thinning shears on the sides and behind the paw to shape the paw a little bit more. <= But you don't have to do this.


Front leg feathering, I use the slicker to brush straight down. And I hold the back of my dog's leg in hand so the ends of the feathers are plush against his feet. This lets me see where to cut.

I aim for the back of that big pad again, and trim straight across. I do both legs like that.

Hocks - I actually do the same thing. I brush straight down and trim the bottom against the back of the big pad.

With hocks, you brush or comb up and out so it's standing straight out in one direction. And then you use your long shears (the ones I said you'd only use for the edge of the ears, well I lied) to carefully sculpt the ends of the hocks so they are smooth without cutting the hair off. 

The idea for trimming hocks is you want to preserve as much of that thickness back there as possible - but you want your dog's hock from top to bottom to look straight. 

I don't do too crazy a crescent moon shape cut to the hocks. I mainly try to get the darn hocks to match when I cut. And pet grooming that's really all you need. It's not a bad thing. 

The teeny tiny hock pics show how 2 of my friends trim the hocks. The blondie on the left is trimmed and groomed like a lot of people do it. I don't like to do it because unless you are constantly reaching down and making sure the feet are perfectly placed, it can make the hocks look bad. 

Trimming the tail, assuming your golden has a very thick bushy tail, you take the tail in hand, draw it downwards against the hock to mark where you want to cut (you want the tail to be longer than the top of your dog's hocks). But you don't want the tail going down beyond the top of the hocks. Some people really leave the tails WAY TO LONG. These are DAWGS, not ponies!

You can twist the end of the tail and do just one blunt cut. This will shape the tail end about right, but you can clean up any odd hairs. 

If your golden doesn't have a bushy tail, I just trim the length and let it be. You don't have to do the twisting thing.

Um. Pics give you an visual of how to trim the feet/hocks/tail as I described. Two of the pics are my dogs. Two of the pics are other people's dogs.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

*Lastly the Ears and Neck*

My dogs are ordering me to go outside, so I'm going to hurry a little bit here.

Ears are very easy to do compared to the feet. 

Yes, you can butcher them pretty bad by doing too much...

But relatively speaking they are the EASIEST part of grooming.

I start out with the Mars Stripper, which I use ON the ears (stripping backwards to take bulk out from the ears). I use it UNDER the ears and going down the sides of the neck following the contours of my dog's front (only front of shoulder bones going down the front, don't go too far behind the shoulders or along the back with any blades, you can make a mess of your dog's "jacket"). And then I use on the front "bib".

I go down along the shoulders, because a dog with a decent ruff will get a "shelf" on the sides. 

As you can see in the picture, my dog had his ears/neck/front gone over with the stripper. I was not aggressively digging coat out of him and taking everything out. It mainly was taking just the bulk out.

Strippers are basically a bunch of hooked blades put together like a really nasty comb. They are intended to remove bulk from under the coat vs removing the top. 

They DO remove top coat too, yep. But not too much. 

After I've stripped the excess stuff out of the coat and brushed everything out with my slicker, I then pull out my 8" shears and aim to do only ONE CUT along the bottom edge of the ears. And that's trimming only the bottom edge of the ears as close to the ear leather as you dare.

The fewer cuts you do, the smoother it looks and the less "fixing" you have to do with the stripping knife and thinning shears.

I will pull the thinning shears out at this point and do 2-3 thinning cuts (straight up and down, not going sideways) if there's more bulk to remove. I use the thinning shears on the front of the ears. This is followed by brushing with the slicker to ensure I'm not removing too much hair.

Stripping knife comes out at the last to do any clean up along the edges, but I also use to smooth out the top of the ear. Just combing down or doing very subtle stripping. 

Tip of ear - if you are careful, using your smallest shears to trim where it curves. Or use your thinning shears. You actually don't have to trim this spot. Better untrimmed than to have a squared of ear tip.  

That's it.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

Bottom line is it is a lot of work and different areas need different things done. You can way less and just focus on feet and ears and not worry about anything else. But if you did the feet, you did the toughest part already. 

A lot of goldens out there, might add, do NOT need the same amount of work as I described.

My Jacks never gets his ears trimmed. He just does NOT grow shag on his ears. 

His "mane" gets a lot more heavy duty stripping though because he has a lot growing down under his chin. He's like this old bearded man. LOL. I strip most of that out so his bib is actually more like Bertie's (or little less) when I'm done. 

His feet just get a quick clipping and trimming around. I don't do thinning shears or other fussy work with his feet. 

His hocks NEVER grow that long. I mainly just brush down and trim the bottoms to the back of the big pad and call him beautiful.

He has a bushy tail, but not like Bertie's, so I just trim the end.

He does get the insides of his ears trimmed out because he has very hairy ears inside. It's like all the shag that would normally grow on Bertie's ears (If I let it!) grows on the inside of Jacks. 

Other goldens out there need even less work than that. 

So you can get away with spending money on very basic tools (the $9 shears, the showerhead thingy, toenail clippers, and a slicker) with some dogs. But you don't have to take this dog to the petstore to get groomed. A lot of the people doing the grooming in places like that are used to doing poodles and cockers and schnauzers and every other breed out there which gets a full body clip.

A lot of these places do sanitary trims which are big NO-NO's in my book and per a lot of people who knowledgably groom this breed. Among else, there's no guarantee they are using clean clippers when clipping your dog's belly, which makes your dog prone to a bad reaction or infection. So a "sanitary" trim ends up making your dog sick.


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## kellyguy (Mar 5, 2014)

Thank you for the tutorial. I'm going to give these tips a try slowly. I do have a question on how to deal with removing matting clumps? We suffered through a bad case of explosive diarrhea with both dogs and Duffy's tail feathers and pants took a beating. We have no ready source of warm water outside or in the garage, and let me just say that cleaning up a hind end in 20 degree weather with only dishpans of warm soapy water is no fun for either of us.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

With our old collie he would get mats pretty frequently...

Use your fingers and the slicker to carefully loosen up and clear out the mats. I like the slicker because you have all the wires helping you + they bend so you aren't yanking really hard on the fur. 

You can use the greyhound comb there too, but gently.

If it's really knotted though - you can use a seam ripper to nip into the worst knots to allow you to loosen/brush the mess out. That way you are not cutting big chunks of fur out. 

You can also use thinning shears on the clumpy area, however if it's just 1-2 strands causing problems the seam ripper can pin point those spots.


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## DevWind (Nov 7, 2016)

Thank you! I’m trying to learn and get better. I’m not horrible at the feet. I used to groom my miniature poodle all the time. I always have trouble with them. My girl has the bushiest hair on her ears! Takes me forever with my thinning shears. 

The one thing I own now that makes grooming tons easier is my grooming table! It even has wheels on the bottom of the table and a wagon type handle so it doubles as a very nice cart. 

There are a couple of thing listed that I don’t own. The mars coat king and a pin brush. I have always used a slicker everywhere.


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## GoldenCamper (Dec 21, 2009)

Very impressive posting Kate, thank you. I've gotten by with a slicker, thinning shears, nail clippers but not everything you mentioned. I do not try for show but have gotten many complements doing it myself after 27 years.

I disagree with bathing every few months but that is just my opinion. Keeping a Goldie in shape isn't that hard but to a newbie reading this it might seem so?


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## Goldens&Friesians (May 31, 2014)

Very good post, Megora! Thanks! Although, I think the feet are easier for me than the ears-I just never seem to be happy with my ears. They don't look bad, but they also just don't look quite perfect either and I'm a perfectionist, lol!



kellyguy said:


> Thank you for the tutorial. I'm going to give these tips a try slowly. I do have a question on how to deal with removing matting clumps? We suffered through a bad case of explosive diarrhea with both dogs and Duffy's tail feathers and pants took a beating. We have no ready source of warm water outside or in the garage, and let me just say that cleaning up a hind end in 20 degree weather with only dishpans of warm soapy water is no fun for either of us.


-In addition to doing what Megora suggests, you may find using a detangling product very helpful. As a professional groomer I've tried lots of detangling products and I found a product in the last year or so that is absolutely the best thing ever! Its called Manely Long Hair Polisher/detangler by Trophy Line. Its a small company and you generally order online because there aren't many stores that carry it yet-and most of those are going to be stores for horse items. I really like this stuff because it not only detangles like nothing I've ever used, but it also doesn't leave nasty residue in the coat. (I actually use the detangler on my own super thick, very long hair cause I love it so much.) They have a shampoo & conditioner as well and I'm planning to switch over to that after I use up the rest of what I currently have.


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## Megora (Jun 7, 2010)

Abeille said:


> My girl has the bushiest hair on her ears! Takes me forever with my thinning shears.


Yep. Bertie too. Using the Mars King first helps thin out the worst of the shag before you do anything else. A lot of goldens have a ton of shag on the ears, behind the ears, and going down the sides of their neck (the lighter/fluffier fuzz stuff). All of that can get stripped out before you do anything else with the ears. And then grooming every month or so keeps it under control. 




GoldenCamper said:


> Keeping a Goldie in shape isn't that hard but to a newbie reading this it might seem so?


It might seem a lot in print, but compared to other breeds where you are shaping them out with clippers (!) or you have to clip around their heads (!!) and there's more detail work involved in shaping their coats - goldens are effortless.

The nitty gritty is = all the stuff I listed off may sound complicated, but once you start doing it and take it one process at a time, it's pretty simple. 




Goldens&Friesians said:


> -In addition to doing what Megora suggests, you may find using a detangling product very helpful.


Yeah, I forgot to mention grease. I have a bottle of coconut milk (from Sally's). Don't really use it too often, but worst case scenarios. 

Bought it for myself. But ended up using for dogs too. Collie pup hasn't been neutered yet, so his coat is very manageable and doesn't mat thank goodness.

Creme of Nature Coconut Milk Detangling Leave-In Conditioner


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## DevWind (Nov 7, 2016)

I will have to get one of those Mars things! I think I have the coconut milk. Bought mine at Target, I think. My girl has a very different coat from my boy. Might need some of this stuff for him too.


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