Tips and Tricks on Basic Dog Grooming Part 1

We are going to start off this series with the introduction of the various tools I usually use for basic dog grooming. These equipment can be found easily in any pet shops. Now let us see.....

This picture strangely reminds me of the times when I was still a regular in the Army. We would strip the rifle parts and place them similar to the picture above. Guys who had served NS would know what I mean.. A distant past... Anyway, lets go on. 

Let me introduce everyone to the first equipment.

Pin Brush

The Pin Brush is used for normally used on breeds like Silky Terriers or any other straight hair, long coated breeds. Use it on your pet like how you would comb your own hair. The points of the pins are round so when you comb your pets, it actually acts as a massage for them. Comb often to keep them tidy and also to prevent tangles.

Slicker Brush

I would use the Slicker Brush on breeds with hair types like Jack Russel and short coated Chihuahuas. They come with many pins at the end and are often used to loosen mats (tangles). Take care when cleaning off hair from the slicker brush after using. Many a times the pins went into my nails! Don't be intimidated by the pins as they may look sharp to some.

Straight Comb

Next we have the straight comb. We would be using this comb to straighten out any mats. It is often used as a finisher to get the coat straight. Simple and straightforward.

Forceps

The Forceps here are similar to the ones doctors use during operations, to hold on to arteries or cottons. For pet grooming, we use them to pluck out ear hair and cotton wrap the tip to do ear cleaning. You can also use alternatives like cotton buds that humans uses if your dog is small enough.

Nail Cutter

Nail Filer

The Nail Cutter is for cutting nails. Comes in many sizes so do get the correct one for your dog. There are many types in the market, but personally I feel that its all the same.

The Nail Filer on the right is for filing the nails after cutting them so that they are not left course and sharp. If nail filing is not done after cutting them, the dog may scratch itself or you badly. I'm sure many of you have experienced it before when you have a happy dog scratching on you for attention.Yikes!

Clipper

The small Clipper is for shaving hair under paws, under bellies and the area around the dog's anus. Battery operated, its safe to shave those areas I mentioned as its blades are mostly made of plastic and runs at a lower speed than the motorized shaver that are used for full shaving ( most call it shave Bo Tak ).

Eye Cleaner

Here on the right is a normal eye cleaner, used for cleaning off eye goo or eye mucus (in Chinese we may call it crudely as 眼屎). Eye cleaner solutions are mostly made up of water and ingredients that are safe for animals. If you are really worried about whats they put in the bottle like me, you may get the one in the picture on the right, Ecoland Eye Cleaner by Budle Budle. I have to tell you first that the description on the whole bottle is in Korean, except for its product name and usage. It does have some organic ingredients in it like green tea and rosemary oil. Nowadays everyone goes for organic this and that. I'm just one of them :)

Ear Powder

The Ear Powder dries up the wax in the inner ear and makes it easier for you to remove any overgrown ear hair. Dirt often gets trapped on the ear hair, so if its not removed regularly, ear infection may set in. People often ask me with a cringed face whether the dogs feel pain when we do the plucking. I would always answer them honestly, "Yes, they feel pain. Then again, if you don't let me remove them, a ear infection is going to be much worse." There is also this debate between vets and groomers on whether we should clean their ears manually or just pour the solution in and let it do its work. My take is that, anything that smells, is not good and must be removed!

Ear Cleaner

Ear Cleaners are used right after you finish plucking the inner ear hair. Applied on a cotton wrapped around the tip of the Forceps, we will start digging the ears of its BLACK GOLD ( Ear wax, that is) There are a lot of different brands but as long as it does the job, I would use them all. I've been using the one on the left for its eucalyptus scent after cleaning. Eucalyptus is a type of flowering tree, and its leaves produces a soothing smell same as those nose rubs like Vicks.







Lastly we have the Styptic Powder. It is a must-have when you are doing the nail cutting. When you cut the nails too short , it is often cut into the quick and the next thing you will hear is a shriek from your poor dog. The nail will start bleeding and because its coming out from a vein, its not easy to stop the blood flow. Styptic Powder does the trick for this type of accidents. A small pinch of it and a little pressure on the nail wound will stop the bleeding in minutes.





Of course not forgetting Towels and Cottons!

After reading through the equipment list and introductions, let me summarize.

Equipments
Pin Brush
Slicker Brush
Straight Comb
Forceps
Nail Cutter
Nail Filer
Clipper
Eye Cleaner
Ear Powder
Ear Cleaner
Styptic Powder
Towels
Cottons

If you haven't been giving your dog some Tender Loving Care, its time to put it into action! Let us go prepare the tools needed and I shall cover as much tips as I can in the following weeks. Though basic grooming only takes an hour to finish, but there are lots of details to look into. PawMart do have most of the tools for sale, so if you need anything just look up our website.

That's all I have for this week. Thanks for reading~


Signing off,
Travis
www.pawmart.com.sg

PS: Please don't mistake me as a master groomer of any sorts. I am just a groomer who had finished his basic training and looks forward to sharing some knowledge that all pet owners should have. I will not be liable to any injuries sustained in the process . Of course, always be careful when you handle your pets.

Grooming The 6 A's

Responding to a S.O.S posting on Facebook, we went over to Uncle Khoe's K9 Shelter  today and did grooming for the 6 Shih Tzus which were rescued on Monday.

Click to see the actual Facebook post

You can read about the story of the 6 doggies at the link above. To summarize it all, they were conceived in an "accident", owners were ill equipped with knowledge or didn't bother to even try to take care of them and finally the owners got complaints from their neighbors and had to give them up before AVA comes "hot on their heels". O M G ain't that classic. Just by looking at the heart wrenching pictures of the doggies you could have imagined how bad their lives were. 

Kennel 1

Kennel 2

They are now housed in window kennels at Ericsson pet farm. This two pictures were taken on the day of the rescue. Still filthy and untidy, only one of them was bathed. The rest of them had to wait for the grooming to happen before the bathing as the mats( hair tangles ) were too terrible. Bathing a dog with mats only worsens the state of the tangle, and may even be harder to take them out during grooming.

It was already Day 3 at the shelter when we managed to go over. Hilda and Irene were there to greet us. Greetings exchanged and no time was wasted. I set up shop to start the grooming. 

The first boy, Astro, arrives... Thought I've seen it all. Not so now. Smell was pungent, and the worst was I couldn't make out where the eyes were. Turned out that they were behind this thick layer of eye goo with hair. 

An hour later, Astro saw the world clearly for the first time. Too bad the first thing he saw was my ugly face. Hah. Nothing like a walk in the sun after bathing. I thought I saw a smile on his face from the picture above.

Then came the next boy, Austin. For a moment I thought that the Flintstones were in the house.

WHAT IS THAT?! He really looked like a caveman. Or cave dog. Never mind, I'll fix that bad hairdo for you buddy. An hour elapsed and he came out nice and clean. Looked way handsome now.

If I featured all of them this blog post will have spanned 2 pages. I would just show you guys the ones that really swept me off my feet, with their bad hairdo.

This boy here was the last one I tidied up. He had the worst mats I've seen thus far, in my time as a groomer. Picture a reggae hairstyle on a dog's face. That's what you will see.

This boy here didn't like grooming at all. And he's the strongest of the siblings. Struggled like a fish out of water. He was also especially terrified of the buzzing sound from the shaver. It took three of us to pin him down and a whole lot of coaxing to finally remove that bad hairdo. 

An hour later, a runway success is born. Looking all cool, macho and hairless. Managed to keep a bit of manly hair on his face, minus the bad reggae mats. 

After a good five hours of hard work, a happy ending for the 6 A's, for now. Look at the before and after photos.

Average time taken was 1 hour per dog. They were unfamiliar to grooming and thus very hard to control. Luckily I had Irene and Hilda taking turns to hold them in place to speed things up. They also did the bathing for the doggies. Kudos to the two of them. I believe not everyone would be brave enough to touch them. A pity that my hands were too busy to take photos of the two heroines of the day. 

Due to the time constraints I could only give each of them a rough shave down to ease their discomforts. I would be going again this Friday to do a final touch up for them. 

Personally, today was a wonderful experience as I had always wanted to participate in social work for animals. Thank you Uncle Khoe's K9 Shelter for this opportunity to use the skills I've learnt for a good cause. Meanwhile, the Team at PawMart would be praying for the 6 A's , Amos, Archie, Austin, Astro, Ariel and Abby, that they will finally have a real happy ending. 

That is to have a place for each of them to call "Home".

Signing off,
Travis
www.pawmart.com.sg

To know more about Uncle Khoe's K9 Shelter, please visit https://www.facebook.com/johnny.khoe.5
and their blog at http://www.unclekhoe.blogspot.sg/

Tips and Tricks of Basic Grooming Series (Prelude)

I was grooming Peanut one evening ,the usual combing, bathing , basic grooming stuff. An idea popped up in my head...

Prelude

5 years back when we first brought Peanut back, we knew nuts about Dog grooming. No idea how to cut nails, comb his coat or clean his ears. The worst was that we didn't bother knowing how. All because in a pet owner's world, there's a person called the "Groomer" who would take care of all these chores for you.

Now lets fast forward to last year, 2012. I took up an interest to learn pet grooming. It wasn't meant to be a career changing factor as I went to learn it with the reason to "save money". I had this strange reasoning of "spending to save", which til now Kelly does not agree on 100%. So I went ahead to spend a good sum of money to learn pet grooming so that I can save money for grooming for my own pets.

And now, after 300 hrs of training at the grooming academy, I am now doing all this grooming on my own. I have furthered my training to the advanced course, which would require another 150 training hours. To do some calculations on how much I saved,

A basic grooming session costs = $25
2 times per month (barely minimum) = $50
Total for a year = $600

Oh my, $600 of savings. That's for one short coat Chihuahua, which doesn't need any styling or cutting of hair. Along came Sasha ( Silky Terrier ), basic grooming for Peanut was reluctantly reduced to once a month, and the costs went up to:

1 x Basic grooming per month for Peanut = $25
1 x Basic grooming per month for Sasha = $25
1 x Full grooming per month for Sasha = $45
Total = $95 per month or $1140 per year!





We've often heard stories of dog owners who never bring their dogs for grooming, or waited until the dog to be dirty enough with their fur in a totally matted (tangled) state before bringing to the groomers. All this in the name of saving money. In actual fact, these owners often end up unhappy with the high fees because of the extra work put in by the groomers to clean up the untidy dog.

I would like to share some skills and knowledge I learnt in my course of training. It may look like I'm trashing my own rice bowl (for I'm a groomer now), but I believe that all pet owners should have a basic idea and try to perform a basic grooming for their dogs, just in case their groomer is fully booked the month. At PawMart, we believe that pet ownership is a journey, and in a journey there are always new lessons to learn!

This Basic Grooming Series is going to be 8 part series, starting next week in August. We are going to explore and touch on how to provide your dog with some basic TLC ( tender loving care). Hopefully I can do up some videos or the very least some pictures for the series. So please stay tuned!

Signing off,
Travis
www.pawmart.com.sg