Dog Grooming – Looking after your Dog’s Fur

If you have a short haired dog, you probably don’t think too much about dog grooming outside of the occasional bath and nail trim. However, if you have a dog with longer fur, you may need to have them groomed on a regular basis in order to help keep them healthy. You may not realise it, but long hair is a breeding ground for parasites and other problems if it is not properly maintained. This is just one example of why dog grooming is important to the health of your dog and the cleanliness of your family home.

While longer haired dogs may seem awfully cute and cuddly, the truth of the matter is that they require almost constant dog grooming to make sure their hair stays matt free and they do not have any unnecessary skin problems that may be hiding underneath all of the fur. You may not know this, but dogs can suffer from skin problems such as allergies, dry skin, ringworm, flea and tick infestations, bed sores, yeast infections and even possible maggot infestations in severe cases where dog grooming is neglected repeatedly.

Even if you choose not to take you animal to a professional dog grooming facility to make sure their fur is kept clean and trimmed, there are certain measures you can take at home to help ensure your pet’s health and safety. First of all, you should brush your dog’s fur at least once a day. This will afford the opportunity to assess any potential problems which may arise and it will help to keep your dog’s fur coat unmated and parasite free. You can also use a monthly application of pet medication that will help reduce the risk of fleas and ticks. These are usually found at your local veterinarian’s office and can be applied as a topical liquid.

If you have an older dog you should really consider keeping their fur cut short through regular dog grooming. While long fur may be attractive, older dogs tend to have a lot more skin problems, so you should take care to keep their fur trimmed back so that you can more easily find any problem areas before they get too bad. An example of this is bed sores. Older dogs tend to be a lot less active and so they lay around a lot, this can cause spots on the skin to grow raw and even possibly bleed. When this happens, if you have not been going to a dog grooming facility and getting the dog’s hair cut back you may not notice the sore until it is either infected or even possibly inundated with maggots, especially if this happens in the summer. This is just one of the reasons why dog grooming is such an important part of your animal’s health, and it is such a simple step that you shouldn’t let anything stop you from keeping up with your animal’s fur.