Grooming - what a pain?

If you're affected by the recession like me (have been retrenched since Nov), you're probably scrimping by not having your dog groomed by a professional groomer unless absolutely necessary.

Even if you are still sending your pooch to its regular grooming session, you still need to upkeep simple stuff like brushing the coat and (most importantly) cutting of the paw fur. Long haired dogs like mine requires the paw fur to be cut around once a week. Question is: how the heck do I get my dog to stay still, not squirm and not try to run away while I'm trying to cut the fur or nails?

Firstly, you MUST MUST MUST start this kind of grooming regime from the start. Puppy/ not puppy, adopted/ not adopted - doesn't matter. YOU need to establish a regime right off. Baileys has seen the brush and shaver so often that he knows what's in store. He likes the brushing but hates the shaver to the core. Nonetheless...he sits down and knows that I'm going to groom him. In other words, you need to train your dog to be used to being groomed by you.

Once that's established, I find that toy or small dogs are easier to groom because they're small and you're able to "squish" them under one arm. But then again, my friend will disagree with me because small dogs tend to squirm and run off a lot easier than medium or large sized dogs.

Nonetheless, try this out - if you have a toy dog, use your non-master armpit to pin it down. For me, I'll be pinning the dog under my left armpit and I'll use my left hand to hold the paw while my right hand uses the shaver to shave the paw fur or to clip the nails. Trick is - be firm. Don't take any nonsense. Hold onto the paw firmly and be quick. I have yet to meet a patient pooch. They'll sit or stand for you to groom but doesn't mean that they love it.

You'll soon find that once your dog is used to the grooming regime, you wouldn't need to pin it under your armpit anymore. Baileys lies on his tummy with his resigned face. He hates the shaver and will try to jerk his back paws whenever the shaver approaches them...but as I mentioned earlier, be firm.

Oh...I keep mentioning shaver and you must be wondering what kind of shaver/ clipper I'm referring to. I did not buy the shaver from a pet shop because those are horribly expensive and seriously, what's the diff? Are they more silent?? I've got no idea. I'd rather spend $60-something on a Phillips shaver from Best Denki/ Courts than spend $90-$100 on a so-called pet shaver. You DO need a shaver for poochie nonetheless. If you want to get one from the pet shop, do feel free to do so. A pet shop assistant once told me that scissors would suffice but I disagree. With all the potential jerking/ squirming etc, scissors will only hurt your dog and even yourself! Hair clippers/ shavers eliminate this problem. I also find the hair clipper effective in shaving off matted fur. :)

In the current economic situation, I'm not going to send Baileys to the groomers this year and I'm doing all the brushing and shaving of matted fur. I try to shave such that he doesn't have patches all over but seriously, I don't think he cares. He's still rolling and jumping around. I detest those groomers who give me and my friend "The Look" whenever they see how much matted fur our dogs have. Its not as if we don't take care of our dogs. I'm sure many owners agree with me that dogs' fur gets highly matted when they lick and scratch themselves.