Home Hand Stripping

[Sandi16]

I recently had Louie trimmed. His hair was in his face, his butt was going nuts and he needed it trimmed to keep dingleberries at bay. Etc. Etc. Etc. Next time you get her trimmed, clipped etc just tell them.. I do NOT want her to look like a Westie. I have seen many Cairns that have that Westie beard, a few even with the skirt. Some people just see a Westie when they see a Cairn. Lucky for me, this lady was familiar with what a Cairn should look like.

[FJR]

Thanks for all the advice on grooming. I just adopted my first Cairn Terrier and she is 16 weeks old and I am not sure when I should or when she should be ready to be stripped. I am thinking there might be a certain age guideline or look that would give me an idea of when to start. I have brushed her a few times in the last couple of weeks and get maybe a couple hairs but that is it.

Thanks for any advice you can give me.

[Kit'sOwner]

Great pics! Really made me realize how different each Cairn is. My Cairn's coat, I can tell by looking at pictures of your Cairn, is COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! It has a wiry, shaggy appearance, but the individual hairs are as straight as a pin whereas your Mett's looks nice and curly. I think that for this reason, a Furminator (which I had on hand for our Lab who was put down last year) works astonishingly well on our particular Cairn. I have had no issues with it creating holes in the coat but I do see how it could with an overzealous groom or with a different type of Cairn coat. I found a new groomer for my Bichon who I took my Cairn to a couple of weeks ago because she REALLY.SMELLED.BAD (still don't know what she got into)...and because I tried to bathe her which was a complete nightmare...and long story short, they did an AMAZING job on her. Top to bottom brush out after a bath with a blow dry, and kept her true to Cairn form FOR $23!!! So, I'm just going to take her to the groomer from now on - maybe twice a year? and use the Furminator as required.

My whole point being that it looks like Cairns can have some coat differences and so the Furminator can work quite well on some of them if you're careful. You can also use a Mars Coat King. They can be found on eBay. Make sure you get the right size!

[Tracy A.]

Really made me realize how different each Cairn is.

My whole point being that it looks like Cairns can have some coat differences and so the Furminator can work quite well on some of them if you're careful. You can also use a Mars Coat King. They can be found on eBay. Make sure you get the right size!

You are so right, Mett & Brat have completely different coats, yet they are brothers. Mettwurst who is pictured in the photos only had the wiry coarse hair on his back where he has a black streak, the rest of the hair is soft. Brattwrust who is darking up with Red had a very coarse coat all over. I think Brad discussed once that lighter colored Cairns have a softer coat, and that is the case in our house.

[Oliver's Mom]

If you opt to use a stripper instead of hand stripping how do you know when to stop the stripping process? I brush out our Cairn's coat every couple days and it seems that he has an endless supply of dead hair coming out. I am waiting for warmer weather to fully strip him down but how far is to far? Should you take it off until no hair comes out when brushing through it or do you just go over it a few times and call it a day? I believe that he was clipped prior to coming into our home because his coat is really soft and not at all wiry. My goal is to hopefully get him back to his natural wiry Cairn coat, if at all possible.

Thanks!

[Nikki]

here's some photos from when Tracy gave me a grooming lesson. But she pretty much just groomed Angel and I watched lol

grooming photos

[Tracy A.]

If you opt to use a stripper instead of hand stripping how do you know when to stop the stripping process? I brush out our Cairn's coat every couple days and it seems that he has an endless supply of dead hair coming out.

Thanks!

That is a really good question. when I start to grab a section of hair I see how much is dead vs good. I decide if i'm going to go shorter or longer... and that helps me deicde on how much of the longest hairs i'm going to take out... Word of cation, if you try to take out all the hair that will come out... your dog will look slightly naked... but if it's warm out hey, hair grows back.

Word of cation, once you commit to a lenght you really need to stick with it on the whole dog...otherwise well...they'll look funny!..really funny!

here's some photos from when Tracy gave me a grooming lesson. But she pretty much just groomed Angel and I watched lol

grooming photos

Hey it was cold out...LOL Nothing wrong with watching the first time and practing on your own, then having another lesson when you feel more comfortable. I think we all feel like we're going to ruin our dogs, make them look funny and hurt their feelings.... but hair grows back and they don't seem to care if you did put a hole in their coat!

[Oliver's Mom]

...when I start to grab a section of hair I see how much is dead vs good. I decide if i'm going to go shorter or longer... and that helps me deicde on how much of the longest hairs i'm going to take out... Word of cation, if you try to take out all the hair that will come out... your dog will look slightly naked... but if it's warm out hey, hair grows back.

Word of cation, once you commit to a lenght you really need to stick with it on the whole dog...otherwise well...they'll look funny!..really funny!

Stupid question...how do you tell which hairs are dead? If I run through his coat with the stripper a big ball of hair comes off at the end of one stroke, is all that dead or no? Also, if you do the head do you part the hair and pull or is it fine to just clip that area as well as the legs/paws? Sorry for all the questions but this stripping process seems a bit like a science The pictures are a big help, now if only one of the stripping pro's could transport through the computer...

[bradl]

Dead hair is usually colorless and thin at the follicle (skin) end. It pulls out VERY easily. If you hold it up to the light, you can clearly see both the color and 'health' change along it's length. Here are some pictures of puppy fluff, but you can still see the color variation along the length - all that hair pulls out very easily.

 

[Oliver's Mom]

Dead hair is usually colorless and thin at the follicle (skin) end. It pulls out VERY easily. If you hold it up to the light, you can clearly see both the color and 'health' change along it's length. Here are some pictures of puppy fluff, but you can still see the color variation along the length - all that hair pulls out very easily.

So, anything that comes out with a stripper or comb is dead then? If so that is amazing b/c there is always a TON on our brush. The second picture you show is after stripping? All the long hair's come out and only short remain with a full stripping? I, along with others I'm sure, am just concerned with making Oliver look like a mess, but I guess he wouldn't really care.

Thanks for all the help/advice!

[bradl]

I should have clarified - the pictures are of a complete and total removal of a puppy coat. There is nothing left but undercoat. Under normal circumstances you would not have to do that to a grown dog. You would ideally "roll" the coat by pulling just some small percentage of the coat, all over, at regular intervals.

What comes out with a brush is probably dead. What comes out with a Mars Coat King will be a mixture of (probably mostly) cut coat (which will itself be a mixture of live and dead coat) and some 'pulled' coat, which will be dead.

Cairns with thick undercoats can put A LOT of hair on a brush.

[susieQ]

This is a terrific discussion. My cairn no longer has an undercoat and gets cold real quickly. I think I may have stripped her too much. Will it com

come back?

[kintra]

If you're truly stripping the coat, you only take off top coat. By using a Furminator/Mars Coat King/stripping knife inproperly or too much, you take out all the undercoat.

[susieQ]

I was using the Mars stripping knives med and fine. She had such a bad odor that I probably stipped too much. So will it come back do you think?

I downloaded a picture and it shows up in the corner of the screen at the sign out block but it didn't show up on my reply yesterday. I

wonder why?

[kintra]

Are you "brushing" through the coat with the stripping knife? That will pull out undercoat.

If you're actuallying doing a pulling motion/picking up top coat, then you're pulling out the top coat.

In my experience, undercoat can take a long, long time to come back in (much longer than top coat anyway). If you pull out all the top coat, you will start to see it growing back within a few weeks.

[Oliver's Mom]

I should have clarified - the pictures are of a complete and total removal of a puppy coat. There is nothing left but undercoat. Under normal circumstances you would not have to do that to a grown dog. You would ideally "roll" the coat by pulling just some small percentage of the coat, all over, at regular intervals.

Last question (hopefully), only the hair that has turned a different color at the tips are dead? So, when you roll the coat you only go through and slowly pull out all of the hair's that are tipped a different color, not any solid one's? Then when you brush the coat any hair that comes with that is just a bonus? I did just sit here and look over his coat and grabbed some of the tipped one's out and they actually seem to pop when they are pulled. Quite fascinating!!

I am soo glad this topic was brought back to life, it has been very helpful!!

[bradl]

I'm a terrible groomer so it's always kind of weird for me to be even commenting - I try to think of it along the lines of "if he can do it obviously *anyone* can.

Other than noting that there is a lot of dead coat on a dog, I don't spend too much time worrying about which individual hair is dead. I typically brush the dog out, then start along the jacket topline because it's easy and helps me get into the groove. I either use a comb to tip up a line of hairs, or use my index and middle finger like pretend scissors to hold up a fan of hair - you've seen your hair stylist do this exact motion, I'm sure. Then I just pinch and pull a few of the hairs in that section. Then reach back into the coat, fan up another line of hair, and pull a few of those. I march my way along the back toward the tail - maybe ten or twenty stops along the way. Then I go back to the withers area and turn my hand so that I'm fanning out lines that go from the topline to the floor - in other words, pulling coat along the side of the dog. Pull the coat in the direction that it is already growing.

In each case, all I'm really doing is looking for the longest, deadest looking hairs and pulling those. You get a feel for how hard to pinch to get the dead hair (it's not very hard, so you don't need to pinch hard). As you noted the dead coat makes a sort of paper-ripping sound as it comes out. The live hair just stays behind because you're not pulling hard enough to pull it out.

When you fan out the coat and look at it, if you've been stripping regularly, you can very easily see that the coat is made up of sort of layers of different lengths (sort of like so: ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||). You just pull the longest (oldest, deadest) layer and leave the rest.

If you can get to a dog show and talk to some Cairn folks, it's the sort of thing that is pretty easy once you've seen the process. It's talking about it that makes it seem way more complicated than it is.

[Oliver's Mom]

Thank you soo much for all the information, it has been extremely helpful. I am going to now regularly pick away at some of the dead top coat just to get started and then come spring when it's warmer I'll go through it more thoroughly. Hopefully by then I will be able to see a much bigger difference in the hair lengths if I keep plucking away at it.

Thank you!

[Hawkeye]

Great explanation Brad!! Do your cairns have a problem with you pulling on their sides? Bailey seems to be more sensitive there and I have been trying to work on the sides a little at a time so not to get him frustrated with me.

[bradl]

Yeah, some are sensitive about their sides; some their butts, etc. Going slow and gentle is pretty much always a good idea, I think. One technique recommended to me was to to not work methodically but rather to 'flit' all over the dog - a pull here, a pull there, head, foot, rump, side, topline - never spending more than a moment in any one place. In addition to keeping the dog guessing it helps prevent making holes or getting into the place where you have a dog groomed on one side but not the other.

[jimnconnie]

Do your cairns have a problem with you pulling on their sides? Bailey seems to be more sensitive there and I have been trying to work on the sides a little at a time so not to get him frustrated with me.

Our Bailey is much the same as yours in that respect. The lower I pull on the sides, the more he objects. When he gets too antsy I know it's time to get the thinning scissors for the belly. Sophie will withstand almost anything during grooming, but Bailey is such a fussbudget about it all.

Jim

[Hawkeye]

Thanks for the tips Brad and Jim.

[Macs-N-Husker]

Thanks for starting this thread Tracy! I came here looking for recommendations on the Mars Coat King but have deciding against buying one. Husker hates to be brushed or stripped and I was looking for an easier solution but I guess I will continue what I have been doing which is stripping a little everyday. I have to let him chew on a rawhide in order to get a brush through his coat. I am pretty sure his coat is almost completely blown because he looks like a shaggy little monster and there is hair on the floor constantly! He'll be 2 in April and has only been to the groomer once for a trim around his backside. Thanks for all the advice!

[Nena]

Nena will be 3 in two weeks (can't believe how fast time went)I have alway hand stripped her, but she was getting so thick I wanted alittle more help. So I bought the Mars coat king and just used it on her. I just took off a small amount and it did a great job. She was getting so thick in the back and neck area that hand stripping just did not get enough out. Very pleased with it so I will continue to do both from time to time.

My question is what can I use on her belly and legs instead of just trimming them? It is hard to do her belly with sissors.

[jimnconnie]

I'm not sure how others handle this, but for us it's a 2 person job. I sit either on a chair or on the floor, holding the dog on my lap with his/her back to my chest. I hold them under the front legs, and Connie trims the belly & between the rear legs with the thinning scissors. Our dogs are used to this & actually don't seem to mind it, so it only takes a few minutes. This is a very sensitive area for the dog, and pulling the hair, even with a tool, can be painful for them.

Jim