Dutch Shepherd Grooming

About the Dutch Shepherd

The Belgian pages make the case that coat decides the grooming and the breed name barely matters. The Dutch Shepherd shows the same thing in a second breed, which is worth knowing so it does not look like a Belgian quirk.

One breed, three coat varieties. Shorthaired is dense and hard over a woolly undercoat. Longhaired is straight, long and harsh over an undercoat. Roughhaired, sometimes called wirehaired, is dense, tousled and harsh with a beard and eyebrows, and it is plucked rather than clipped.

The dog underneath is identical in all three: an intense, quick, biddable working herder that is now widely used in police and military service.

All three are brindle, which is required, and it is what tells a Dutchie from a Malinois at a glance.

Which coat you have, and what each one needs

Shorthaired is the commonest and the easiest. A dense hard coat over a woolly undercoat, needing a weekly going over with a slicker or rubber mitt and an undercoat rake during the seasonal sheds. Nothing is cut. This is a ten minute a week dog for most of the year.

Longhaired is a straight, long, harsh outer coat over the same undercoat, with feathering on the legs and tail. Brush twice a week with a slicker and rake, working to the skin, and check behind the ears, the armpits, the britches and under a collar. It mats less than a Tervuren because the outer coat is harsher, but it is a real job.

Roughhaired is the interesting one: a dense, harsh, tousled coat about two inches long with a beard and eyebrows, and a woolly undercoat beneath. It is meant to look rough rather than neat, exactly like the Laekenois, and it is plucked by hand once or twice a year rather than clipped or scissored.

All three shed seasonally and all three are never clipped.

The rough coat also needs the beard treated as its own daily job, since it goes into the water bowl at every drink.

Brindle, and telling a Dutchie from a Malinois

Every Dutch Shepherd is brindle, and it is required by the standard: a gold or silver base with clear dark striping, on all three coat varieties.

That is the quickest way to distinguish one from a Malinois, which is fawn with a black mask and no striping. The two breeds are close relatives, look similar in build, and are used for the same work, so the confusion is common.

Brindle has no grooming implications of its own, and it is worth knowing for a practical reason: a Dutch Shepherd puppy's striping can be faint and develops with age, so an owner who thinks the pattern is fading or arriving is usually watching normal development.

The striping shows dust and dandruff less than a solid black coat does, which is a minor mercy.

Sun bleaching affects the dark striping over a summer, lightening it to a browner tone, and it grows out.

What does warrant attention is coat that thins, goes patchy or changes texture, which points at a thyroid or skin problem rather than color change.

The seasonal blow, and never clipping

All three varieties carry a woolly undercoat and all three blow it twice a year, over several weeks in spring and autumn.

Rake daily through it with an undercoat rake, working with the lie of the coat. On the shorthaired variety a deshedding tool is genuinely effective, since there is nothing else in the coat to damage.

A bath and high velocity blow out at the start of each blow removes far more than home brushing and shortens the whole thing.

Bathe every ten weeks or so otherwise. A working coat relies on its own oils for weather resistance and over-bathing strips them.

Do not clip any of the three. A double coat that is clipped loses the protective outer layer while keeping the insulation, so the dog is not cooler, and regrowth is often patchy or permanently soft. On the rough variety clipping also destroys the harsh texture the variety exists for.

Trimming is limited to pads and the sanitary area, plus tidying the beard on a rough coat.

A working dog with a working brain

Dutch Shepherds are intense, quick and extremely biddable, and they are increasingly bred for police and protection work, which means many are more driven than a family expects.

For grooming, drive is mostly an asset: these dogs learn to stand, be handled and accept a dryer very quickly if it is taught as a task rather than endured as an ordeal.

What causes problems is a dog with no outlet. An under-exercised working dog on a grooming table is a different animal from one that has worked that morning, and that is a real planning point rather than a joke.

They can be reserved with strangers and some are handler protective, so be honest at booking and ask for a quiet slot if needed.

Start young, keep sessions short and matter of fact, and introduce dryer noise at home rather than at a salon.

Nails every three to four weeks, ears wiped weekly, teeth as usual. The ears are erect and well ventilated so infection is uncommon.

What to tell your groomer

Say which coat variety it is, since short, long and rough need three different things.

For a rough coat, ask for plucking rather than clipping or scissoring, and say it should look tousled.

Say the coat is never clipped in any variety, including for heat.

Ask for a deshedding groom during the seasonal blows: rake and a high velocity dry.

Say how the dog is with strangers, and ask for a quiet slot if it is handler protective.

Mention that dryer noise has or has not been introduced at home.

Keeping the coat between grooms

Common Questions About the Dutch Shepherd