smelly dog - Help!

[susieQ]

Help!! I am a relatively new cairn terror owner. Totie showed up at our door end of January filthy dirty. Gave her a bath of course. Then began doing research on the breed and found a lot of information about the stripping knife and not to give bathes too often. So I purchased a mars medium and fine stripping knife and did it completely according to the illustrations and instructions of web sites and the information on this site. But in no time at all her hair is oily and smelly. I tried the alcohol mist I read about. I comb first

a brush then the other side of the brush that has knobbies on the comb. Then I comb her with a medium comb specially for this type of dog every morning without fail.

What is the answer? I have read that if you bathe too often you can ruin their hair. Could that be the problem? Previous owner bathed too much? If so, what do I do?

My husband doesn't want this precious dog in the house because it smells.

Looking forward to help.

SusieQ

[jimnconnie]

Does Totie have a soft coat, or a coarse coat? If the answer is soft, then she probably was bathed to often, and clipped, by her previous owners. It sounds like she needs to be completely hand stripped, down to her soft undercoat, to allow a new healthy coat to begin growing in. If you are using stripping knives on Totie, be sure to gently pull the hair straight out, in the direction that it is growing. If you jerk the knife, or turn your wrist, you will cut the hair instead of pulling it out. A new, healthy coat shouldn't get dirty easily, or smell. It may take more than one stripping for Totie's coat to return to where it should be. Also, it is possible that genetics are the reason for a soft coat, though it is not the norm for Cairns. This article: Crofter's Dream provides a lot of info about Cairn grooming. Good Luck!

Jim

[susieQ]

Totie has course hair. I stripped her again today. So I'll do it several times this week and see if that helps. Thanks for the article. I had already printed it out and read it a lot trying to get this right.

It is fun reading comments about the cairn behavior. Like the "on leash" golden rule. I hadn't heard that but we figured it out real quick. We closed in our large front yard so she couldn't chase everything. We have woods all around us as well as ponds and cows. Too much for her to get into trouble and I not know it. That is probably how we came to have her show up at our front door. But we did the thorough search before we called her ours.

Thanks for your help.

susieQ