Cooler weather has finally come to South Carolina and my dog is shedding heavily, which makes her look moth-eaten. She is quite popular with the children in the neighborhood and they have been asking me what is wrong with her. I brushed enough hair off her this afternoon to knit another dog of her approximate size. Inexplicably, not only is she not completely bald as a result, but her hair seems to have regrouped and there are fresh tumbleweeds of hair on the bedroom floor, as if she is saying “Take that, hated vacuum cleaner, you will never defeat my follicles.” The furniture is upholstered with dog hair, and I just ate a dog hairy bagel, which is possibly even more disgusting than it sounds.
–Ann Bartow
Congrats on brushing out your puppy dog. Same thing happens with my two cats–they’ll look absolutely moth eaten until I comb out two full sweaters of fur from then. Then their coats look lovely.
The uneven look probably has to do with clumped and tangled loose fur.
And lets not even talk about their capacity to fill the liter box….
Ann,
Do you have a Shed n Blade? It’s ten times better than a brush and gets out fur before it becomes a household mess. And dogs love it-it’s like a massage. Any pet store has it.
I just ate a dog hairy bagel, which is possibly even more disgusting than it sounds.
I dunno. If the bagels in South Carolina are anything like the bagels in North Carolina, a schmear of dog hair might actually be an improvement.
We love our pets, don’t we? My miniature poodle (Munchkin) and my LARGE calico cat (Brandywine) enjoyed a station in life far above my own.
It sounds like your pooch may need to meet a furminator (They’re often on sale at Amazon and online pet care sites). My results with my cats aren’t quite as impressive as the examples shown there, but it still get a lot more fur out than the brush. Heck, you might get enough fur out of her to further confound the laws of physics and knit two more dogs!
So many great comments! Maybe I should forget feminism and just blog about my dog full time.
Brat – my cat sheds but my dog, well it defies description. She is black but has a gray undercoat, which makes the tufts and clumps stand out. And what is with the tufts and clumps? I pulled a huge freestanding clump this morning from an area I just vigorously brushed yesterday. Where did it come from? Why only in one patch? How did the new hair it replaced grow in so rapidly and evenly?
Ralph – yes, that is what I brush her with, and it removes a lot of hair, but a lot more hair freakishly takes its place…
Eric – I agree that the bagels around here are basically rolls with holes in the middle, but adding hair doesn’t improve them at all. How come good bagels made it to Virginia but not yet to the Carolinas?
Bobc, yep, pets are great, thogh I’m awfully glad they don’t have opposable thumbs sometimes :>)
Meg – thanks for the suggestion, I’ll look for one, it’s worth a try.
Some pet fur actually has small “hooks” on it which can cause clumping. Particularly loose fur will accumulate.
These little hooks do make for some interesting looking critters, if they go without combing/brushing for a while.