hair & grooming

[finncaraid]

Was just reading the most recent post about grooming started by HokieCairn & looking at all the great pics everyone posted & it got me thinking about Finn's hair. Thought initially I was imagining things that his hair grew very slowly but the hair has hardly grown back on his leg where it was shaved for his neutering op in mid-Feb. The attached pic was taken today: shouldn't his hair be longer at 8 1/2 months?? I keep checking his coat to see if any of the outer coat is loose but it is firmly attached. I brushed & combed him this morning & got a bit of hair but I'm assuming that's the undercoat. I've always had long haired dogs & their hair grew really fast: is it normal for a Cairn to be a slow-hair-grower?? And please note on his head the hair above the eyes. Am I supposed to be training this to not flop over his eyes? Not matter how much I try to smooth it over his eyes it just pops right back. Is there a doggie brylcream?? Am I needlessly concerned or is there a big variety in Cairn coats? His coat is very dense & "hard" but not very long. I had met his mother, father, grandma & grandpa before & after being stripped & they all had the same coat only longer. Am I missing something???

[Idaho Cairns]

It's hard to tell in on photo but Finn's hair looks right to me--it is thick and lengthy, looks very rich. Yes, you can and should trim those "Groucho's" over his eyes--seems like those always grow fast on my dogs and I am constantly cutting them back. In my experience there is indeed a great variation in Cairn hair--some are truly double coated and some are just soft and luxurious. Your little dog looks great from here.

[bradl]

Coat on legs grows pretty slowly. Heck, normally the jacket grows super-fast but Haggis' coat is still a fair bit shorter on his rear haunch where he was shaved to have a growth removed well over a year ago.

As for the hair over the eyes, I quite like the natural "fall" that Cairns have. Normally we brush the coat in the direction we want it to grow. Typically that means brushing the head hair forward from the midline of the skull (or say, from just behind the ears). Most folks do keep the hair at the "stop" (the indentation between their eyes) fairly short so as to hold the longer hair above it from flopping down into their eyes.

Here's a nice dog (not mine) hanging around and waiting his turn at Montgomery, showing a lovely head with a nice fall over the eyes.

And here's a puppy from the 2002 Sweepstakes (not my dog; photo by JackDeWitt). I just love this pup and his photo.

[finncaraid]

Thanks for the info & photos!! Finn thanks you for the compliment, Idaho Cairns! Couldn't remember yesterday the right name for the stop & fall but that's what I'm talking about. Unlike the reat of him, Finn's facial hair is very silky & long. It's naturally going in the right direction above the eyes but the hair at the stop is starting to curl back to his eyes. I keep parting it several times a day to train it to go with the "eyebrows" but it pops right back. I'm thinking I should trim it a bit to look like that wheaten photo. As far as his body hair, Finn is starting to look like a Cairn that needs stripping. His hair stands out from the body & looks shaggy. He looks nicely groomed for about 5 minutes after combing. When I tug on the hair, nothing moves but skin. When I comb/brush him, there are no straggly hairs sticking out. His hair is very silky near the root but about 3/4 of each hair is very coarse. It would seem to me that because it is soft at the root it would come out easily if it needed to. Or am I confusing the undercoat & top coat? His beard is starting to lay back toward his throat. Should this be trimmed to look like a beard? Since his hair seems to grow so slowly, I'm afraid to touch it with scissors. Think I really need to get somewhere with well groomed Cairns so I know what I'm doing! The Potomac specialty show (thanks for the info, bradl, in the other post) should have lots of those.

[bradl]

You may just need some calibration as to how much force is needed. Grab literally just one of the longer hairs and yank it regardless. Look at it under a strong light. If the hair is coarse, thick, and straight at the tip, but changes to colorless, thin, and possibly slightly wavy at the follicle end, it is dead and pullable. Before we groomed Haggis recently he hand some hair that was - no lie - probably six inches long, all but the last two inches of it dead.

What I have *never* understood is how a dead coat can grow longer

[sanford]

What I have *never* understood is how a dead coat can grow longer

Maybe it's just a myth. I was told that our fingernails grow after we're dead, but that's also a myth.

[bradl]

Maybe dead is a relative term. The hair is alive, it's just given up hope. It's depressed coat.

[Islander]

Thought I would add to this topic since Gus was just groomed yesterday. I take him to his breeder, who does "her puppies" only for a fraction of the usual cost. She strips his body but uses a scissors on his face. She says she only plucks the heads/faces of the show dogs. I like to see his eyes. Here are his Before & After shots:

[Idaho Cairns]

Gus looks great. I went at Bonnie again this weekend with the Mars and with some thinning shears and I think I'm getting the idea of how to do the face with that "halo" look. First I had to work on the mane around her neck/chest which was thick and long.

Then I just held the hair on the top and side up and cut them down with the thinning scissors until they were about an inch long--I was surprised when she "shook out" her hair and that face hair stood up. She's far from perfect but she sure has that rough, round, look to her now and the cut really opened up her face. I'm not sure she is enjoying getting her face hair pulled everytime she gets near me--I have to look at the symmetry of the hair you know!

Gus's pictures really shows the difference between letting the hair grow on the face and cutting it back in order to open it all up--these dogs have really pretty faces behind all that winter hair!

[Islander]

Your photos inspired mine, Idaho!

I like the shaggy look too, but it gets to a point where I can't see his eyes. I have trimmed the eyebrows myself with scissors, but after viewing that incredible video of the English fellow stripping his Cairn, and reading lots of posts about stripping, I wasn't sure if it was okay to cut his eyebrows. I was glad to talk to Judy (breeder) about it and get her okay; she has always given me very sensible advice.

I suppose you can do quite a bit to those hardy coats without really harming them.

[janis]

Brad - great pictures. The problem I'm having with Kirby's face is the hair on top of his hear is really soft - almost like undercoat, it kind of lays flat with soft curls, the hair at "eyebrows is soft too, but it falls forward so he had some standing up.

[KShep]

Thought I would add to this topic since Gus was just groomed yesterday. I take him to his breeder, who does "her puppies" only for a fraction of the usual cost. She strips his body but uses a scissors on his face. She says she only plucks the heads/faces of the show dogs. I like to see his eyes. Here are his Before & After shots:

Gus is beautiful! She really brought out his good looks!

[KShep]

Maybe dead is a relative term. The hair is alive, it's just given up hope. It's depressed coat.

Bwahahah!

[Hawkeye]

Brad - great pictures. The problem I'm having with Kirby's face is the hair on top of his hear is really soft - almost like undercoat, it kind of lays flat with soft curls, the hair at "eyebrows is soft too, but it falls forward so he had some standing up.

Janis-- I have the same problem with Bailey (minus the soft curls). I have used the thinning shears to the top of his head, he really does not care for me to strip the top of the head, belly and legs so as a result they are soft. He's cute anyway!