Sam and his hairdresser

[Sam I Am]

Advice on an old subject.....grooming an unwilling Cairn. Part of me thinks just let the boys hair grow and stop torturing him...but I want a Cairn that looks like a Cairn not a Yak. If stripping is not supposed to hurt why is Sam acting like I am torturing him...even combing his coat he carries on . I have a grooming table with the noose  but he still just turns around and although he doesn’t actually chomp me, he certainly gets my hand in his mouth with these ridiculous whining - growling sounds. I use the Mars coat on his back and loins but it doesn’t work well on the chest and sides and I do use shears for his belly and trim his caboose. He has a luxuries beautifully thick coat, coarse on top and soft underneath. He isn’t being aggressive just won’t stand still so in the end we both are exhausted..am I destined to have a Cairn that looks like  a hostile bottle brush?

[Idaho Cairns]

We have the same problem with both our girls and the"yak" look is the result--at our (and their) ages we do a minimum amount of grooming--getting the hair out of their eyes and corralling some of the worse knots.  Any time a brush or king coat comes out they both disappear.
I have no suggestion to solve your dilemma.

[bradl]

If you can locate a willing person to serve as head-holder that can help a lot.

Otherwise you're looking at grooming one-handed pretty much, with one hand immobilizing his head while other hand brushes or plucks the areas Ruffy has decided are no-go for you. 

Bill McFadden gave a tip once for our dog who was lifting his leg up off the table every time I tried to brush it — lift the *opposite* leg off the table so that he had to stand and balance on the leg I wanted to groom. That worked very well for Haggis. For Echo … sigh … she would just force her neck down into the bottom of the noose and rotate like a rotisserie.  

Different dogs have different tolerances but grooming tolerance it is still largely a learned behavior. We had a puppy once who would scream if you simply held your hand *six inches* in the air above him and wiggled your fingers. You could literally start and stop the screaming. I'm surprised the neighbors didn't call animal control. 

He got his puppy fluff removed regardless. 

[bradl]

Oh, and a professional handler once laughed at me because I was using some down-time at a show to groom non-show Stella who has a genetically soft coat (very hard to groom — not worth it but I hadn't given up yet). In order to immobilize her I had her in a wrestling headlock. My face along her back behind her head, my arm wrapped around her head and neck, under and between her front legs, just to keep her still enough to get at some side and belly coat. Ugh.

You could try that

We tell our breeder friend who now grooms her to feel free to use clippers. 

[Sam I Am]

“Rotate like a rotisserie” is a perfect example of Sam on the table, with the noose on him.

[sanford]

I'll add to the list of flummoxed owner-groomers. Everything described here is a version of what I go through, grooming Ruffy. I resorted to using 2 grooming arms with loops... One for the head, and one for the hind quarters, with mixed results. As an alternative to the "headlock" technique described above, I had some success putting my free arm under his rear, with my palm under his belly, facing up and boosting him up off the table at a 30 degree angle so that only his front paws made contact, keeping him of balance enough for me to make some progress - if I worked quickly! (I'm a bit chagrined to relate that this technique is not for the squeamish or faint-hearted because it unavoidably involves intimate contact with private parts of the undercarriage)....Something I didn't know I signed on for when Ruffy came into my life!

Edited February 25, 2019 by sanford

[Sam I Am]

I used to cross tie my horses as per the picture, it kept them from turning around ...mmmmmm perhaps I should try that with Sam. I can see him hanging himself. At least He couldn’t retaliate when getting up close and personal to certain parts of his anatomy.

Edited February 25, 2019 by Sam I Am

[Kathryn]

And all of these posts provide many reasons why we spend so much more on Oban's and Angus' grooming than we have ever spent on our own!

 

[Pepper Bug's Mom]

Yes - the dreaded run and hide as soon as I open the grooming tool drawer in the kitchen....

[Sam I Am]

More tales in the life of a very hairy Cairn. When I was taking Sam to his breeder for grooming she would always use small clippers to trim the hair around and in between the pads of his feet. Since attempting to do my own grooming () I haven’t been doing that ...probably because I don’t have the tiny clippers she used to do the job. The other day I noticed Sam was licking the pads of his front foot. Sam and I had a discussion about allowing me to have a look, I won...rare occurrence, and right in the middle of the pads was a wad of thick hair, in a tight ball stuck tight up in between the pads against the skin. After carefully cutting it out I am sure it must feel so much better. 

So my question is, do most of you remove the hair between their pads and if so what is the easiest way to do that? If I buy the little clippers can I do damage to his pads?

[bradl]

Yes, I trim that hair. I use a small pair of blunt-tipped scissors.  They look a lot like these:

Ours are slightly curved which seems to makes it even easier. But I've also used straight sharp shears too. Carefully  

Our breeder friend also uses the small clippers. They look like they are probably a mustache trimmer. It should be very difficult to do any harm with them. Clippers typically have guards to keep skin out of the blades.

[weecairns]

poor Sam... so cute.  I have been using small scissors 4-5" just for doing feet.  our Boy has gotten used to it and actually likes me helping him out if he gets a burr or twig stuck up in there.  the baby is getting used to it - she currently is only getting one foot trimmed at a time.  3 minutes is about the extent of her attention span right now so we just do one foot and then tomorrow we will do another 

[sanford]

I get nervous cutting hair between the toes. My small blunt scissors are very sharp and Ruffy goes into amazing contortions to thwart me so I resort to electric clippers which he hates just as much, but at least they get the job done quickly and safely!