Grooming

Grooming is incredibly important for Pyrs. Boasting an impressive double coat simple maintenance is your best friend. Between 30 minutes and 1 hour of grooming a week can save much pain and frustration for you and your dog. This is speaking for pyrs who have a correct working coat that has been maintained thoroughly. Even with proper coat these times can vary. A dog in full coat will take longer to groom than a dog with a blown coat. At the same time a dog actively blowing coat will take more time.

We are going to break up our dog into basics parts and spend some time focusing on each part.

These parts include

The feet
The head

Line Brushing

The process of line brushing is one of the most important things you can learn when owning any dog with a double coat and or long hair.

Your tools

Pin Brush or Slicker Brush
Metal Comb
Spray Bottle of Water or Grooming Spray

Line brushing is easily the best way to assure your dog is mat free and comfortable. When line brushing a dry coat you are more likely to break the coat. So we want to make sure we give the coat a spritz of water or grooming spay before brushing. I personally use Crown Royal and have for several years with good success.

Definitely refurr back to this section as you go thought the individual sections. This will be one of the most important

Start by separating the coat so you can see your dog’s skin. It is almost always easier to start from the bottom or end of wherever you are trying to brush. Take your spray bottle and give a light spritz about 6 inches from the coat. Next you’ll take your pin or slicker brush and start pulling coat from the top of where you separated to the skin. Repeat this slowly moving up the section you’ve picked, reapplying your spray as the coat gets dry moving up. When you’ve made it to the top of the section you’re working on you’ll want to go back to where you started and go over it again with a metal comb. Depending on how much of your spray you used on your first go round you may not need to respritz the coat.

Your efforts should leave your dog’s coat looking like one piece, not clumpy and separated. Line bushing is what you will be doing on most every part of your dog.

The Feet

It is important to keep in mind the Great Pyrenees as a breed is largely left natural. There is very minimal scissor work that is needed on pyrs. Feet, ears and whiskers are the only things that should be trimmed on a show dog. Ears and whiskers are not necessary for the average pet. We are not talking about ears and whiskers though, we are talking about feet here.

Your tools (*optional)

Shears straight or curved
Thinning shears
Mini clippers*
Slicker brush
Comb*
Nail clippers
Dremel*

The front foot according to the standard should be “rounded, close-cupped, well padded, toes well arched”. I’ll be going into detail on how we are going to achieve that look.

To start we will cut all the nails. Cutting the nails now will ensure we can get a closer and cleaner cut. We can then take our slicker brush and brush up all the hair on the foot. This will cause the hair to stand on end and make it easier to cut the fur.

Taking our straight shears we are going to cut the bulk of the hair between the pads, on top of the foot and around the foot. On top of the foot we want to leave a little extra fluff to blend into the overall shape.

Taking our curved shears (this can be done with straight shears) we want to take all the fur on the sides of the feet close. This will emphasize the round look we are going for.

This next step is optional and can vary depending on the climates you live in. Taking your clippers we are going to clip out all the hair between the pads. This may not be suggested in exceedingly hot or cold climates. I chose to do this especially during the winter to prevent snow balls from forming between my dogs pads. Clipping the hair between the pads can help give your dog more traction on slick floors as well as reduce dirt being tracked into the house. It is important to weigh your pros and cons before taking the pad hair this close.

To finish off the front feet we will take our thinning shears and go over the top of the feet. We want to take the remaining bulk and blend everything together. This is easiest to do while holding the foot.

Just like the forefeet the rear feet should be “rounded, close-cupped, well padded, toes well arched”. The standard states that the rear feet may have a tendency to toe out as a result of their rear dewclaws. We will take this into account in the way we trim the feet. The overall trim is very similar to the front feet. We want to start with all the same beginning steps. The main spot we are going to divert is in trimming around the foot. We want to take the outside edges especially close. This will prevent the foot looking more toed out than it is.

Included in trimming the rear feet we want to include the feathering on the hock. When you look at the foot from underneath you want to locate the largest pad. This pad almost resembles a heart shape at the “top” of that heart where the bumps are we are going to take either our clippers or straight shears and just cut the hair right between the bump. This will create separation between the foot and the longer hair along the hock. This will help judges see a better kick back in conformation.

The Head

Grooming the head is pretty simple as far as steps go. We want to focus on 3 things whiskers, top of the head, and ears.

Your tools (*Optional)

Stripping blade
Shears
Thinning shears
Whisker shaver*

Whiskers are to be removed using either a whisker shaver or shears. As a rule of thumb a whisker shaver is typically safer but they can be hard to find. Some dog show vendors carry shavers but your best bet is a farm supply or agway store. You will want to run the shaver over all the whiskers on the muzzle and eyebrow whiskers. If you are unable to find a whisker shaver you can use regular straight shears. If using shears it’s recommended to use small shears that have a rounded tip. Just in case your dog moves you wont stab them with the sharp end of your shears.

The top of the head should be either stripped or plucked. You can use a stripping blade on top of the head. If you are not comfortable using a stripping blade you can instead pluck the long hairs. When plucking hair you should always pluck in the direction you want the hair to grow in. So don’t pluck hair against the grain or straight up. Doing this repetitively can cause the hair to change the direction it grows. We want the top of the head to look smooth and sleek without long soft hairs. The top of the head very rarely needs to be redone after all adult coat comes in.

Finally the ears. Ears can be very intimidating to the beginner. They are in my opinion one of the easiest things to mess up but when done right just bring the whole head together. There are a couple ways you can do ears. You can use thinning shears which creates the fastest result but is by far the easiest to take too much hair off. You can strip the ears using a stripping blade. The middle ground of safety and still relatively fast. Your third option is to pluck. This is by far the safest option but takes time and patience. Your end goal should always be to puck ears even if you start with one of the other options. Ears are similar to the top of the head that after adult hair has grown in there should be little maintenance needed.

The Tail

Your tools (*Optional)

Pin Brush
Metal Comb
Water or Grooming Spray

The goal for our tail is to make it “all one piece”. With infrequent brushing the tail is one of the first places to mat. We are going to do a form of line brushing around our tail. I personally like a high content silicone grooming spray for the tail as it helps it look “whole” longer. Starting at the tip of the tail we want to break it into sections. Starting from the end of the hair we want to make our way to the base where the tail bone is. Taking it slow will help us avoid breaking the hair. We will make our way up the tail. We will continue this until we reach the base where the tail meets the back. At this point we can brush through the full tail and restart the same process with a metal comb.