Curly Coat Grooming

The comb test, and why a brushed dog can still be matted

The most common conversation in a grooming salon starts with an owner saying they brush every day, and ends with the groomer showing them a coat that is solid against the skin. Both people are telling the truth.

A slicker brush glides beautifully over the top of a curly coat. It tidies the outer inch, it makes the dog look and feel brushed, and it can do that indefinitely while a dense felted layer builds up underneath against the skin, out of sight and out of reach. The coat has effectively grown a lid.

The test that settles it takes one tool and about a minute. Take a metal greyhound comb, part the coat down to the skin somewhere awkward, behind an ear or in an armpit, and try to draw the comb through from the skin outward. If it passes cleanly, the coat is genuinely brushed. If it stops, snags, or will not reach the skin at all, the coat is matted whatever the brush is telling you.

Do that test in four places: behind both ears, both armpits, the back of the thighs, and either side of the tail base. Those are where it starts. If all four pass, the rest almost always will.

The fix, if you are brushing already, is usually not more brushing but different brushing. Work in sections from the skin outward, lifting the coat above the line you are working on and letting it fall a layer at a time, then prove each section with the comb before moving up. It is slower to describe than to do, and it is the whole difference between grooming a curly coat and polishing it.

Why a groomer shaves a matted dog instead of brushing it out

When a coat is matted to the skin, an owner naturally asks for it to be brushed out and is often upset to be told it will be clipped off instead. The reasoning is worth knowing, because it is not about the groomer saving time.

Dematting a tight mat means pulling repeatedly on hair that is anchored in living skin. Ten minutes of it leaves an area red, swollen and sore, and an hour of it over a whole body is a genuinely painful experience for the animal. Skin under a mat is already compromised: it is damp, it has had no air, and it is frequently inflamed or broken before anyone touches it. Mats also contract as they tighten, pulling the skin into ridges that sit right where a blade has to pass.

The professional standard almost everywhere is humanity over vanity. If removing the mats safely means the coat comes off short, the coat comes off short. A groomer who agrees to spend two hours dematting a pelted dog because the owner asked is not doing the animal a favor.

What comes off often looks alarming, and what is underneath sometimes does too. Red patches, small sores and skin that has clearly been irritated are common and they are the reason for the clip rather than the result of it. A good groomer will show you and tell you what they found.

The recovery is straightforward. The coat grows back true on a curly breed, with no regrowth risk of the kind a double coat carries, and the dog is comfortable within a day. The thing to fix is the interval, not the coat.

Curly coated cats are a completely different job

The Devon Rex, Cornish Rex and Selkirk Rex all carry a curl, and almost nothing above applies to them.

Their coats are short. A Cornish Rex has only the soft undercoat with no guard hairs at all, a Devon Rex has a sparse, fragile, loosely curled coat, and a Selkirk Rex has a genuinely plush curled coat that is the closest of the three to what a dog owner would recognize. None of them is clipped, and the first two are fragile enough that vigorous brushing breaks the hair and leaves bald patches.

What these cats do need is the thing the hairless breeds need, for the same reason: a thin or sparse coat cannot absorb and distribute skin oil, so it collects. Rex cats are prone to greasy skin, waxy ears and dirty nail beds, and they are bathed more often than a normal cat. A soft cloth, a gentle shampoo and regular ear attention is the whole routine.