Grooming Non-Sporting Group Dogs: The Group With No Pattern

A Bichon, a Poodle, a Bulldog and a Dalmatian, the group with no single coat type

What these breeds have in common

The Non-Sporting Group is where the kennel club put the breeds that did not fit anywhere else, and it is honest to say so. Poodles, Bichons Frises, Bulldogs, Dalmatians, Chow Chows, Shar Peis, Boston Terriers, Lhasa Apsos, Shiba Inus, Keeshonden and Schipperkes all sit here.

There is no common ancestry, no common job and, most importantly, no common coat. This one group contains a curly coat, a silky coat, a smooth coat and one of the heaviest double coats in dogs, and two dogs in it can need appointments with nothing whatsoever in common.

It is therefore the group where owners most often guess wrong about what their dog needs, and where the group name is least worth reading.

What this group means for grooming

No single coat type, which makes it the group where owners most often guess wrong. Bichon and Poodle sit here alongside the Bulldog.

What actually decides the grooming

The coat type, not the group. It sets the tools, the interval and the price, and two dogs in this group can need completely different appointments.

Four different appointments in one group

It is worth setting the range out plainly, because it is the whole character of this group.

The Poodle and the Bichon Frise are curly coats. They grow continuously, they hold shed hair instead of dropping it, they mat to the skin if the interval slips, and they need a full clip and scissor finish every four to six weeks.

The Chow Chow and the Keeshond are heavy double coats. They are never clipped, they blow coat twice a year, and their appointment is a bath, a deshed and a blow out.

The Lhasa Apso is a silky coat that grows to the floor if you let it, and is usually kept in a pet trim.

The Bulldog, the Boston Terrier and the Dalmatian are smooth coats with nothing to cut, whose appointments are nails, ears, skin and, for the Bulldog, folds.

Nothing about the group predicts which of those you have. The coat does.

Where the guessing goes wrong

Two mistakes come up repeatedly with this group and both are expensive.

The first is asking for a Chow Chow or a Keeshond to be clipped down, usually in summer and usually with the best of intentions. Both are dense double coats and both are on the list of breeds most likely to regrow patchy after a close clip. The coat that comes back is woolly, holds dirt and mats in a way the original never did, and there is no reliable way to reverse it. The reasoning is on the double coat page.

The second is treating a Bichon like a low maintenance dog because it is small, white and fluffy. A Bichon coat is one of the fastest matting coats there is: it looks immaculate on the surface while felting against the skin, and a brush glides over the top of that indefinitely. The comb test on the curly coat page is the thing to know.

Both mistakes share a shape. The owner reasons from how the dog looks rather than from how the coat is built.

How to work out what you actually have

You do not need to know the breed standard. You need to know three things, and you can establish all of them in about a minute with a metal comb.

First, is there an undercoat? Push the coat backward against the way it lies and look at the base. If there is a dense, soft, woolly layer underneath a coarser top layer, it is a double coat and it does not get clipped.

Second, does the hair keep growing? If the dog needs a haircut every couple of months or the coat would otherwise reach the floor, it is a continuously growing coat, curly or silky, and it needs clipping on a schedule.

Third, can the comb reach skin? Part the coat behind an ear and in an armpit and draw the comb out from the skin. If it stops, the coat is matted whatever the surface looks like.

Those three answers put you on the right coat page, and the coat page is the one that tells you what to do. The coat types index lists all six with pictures of each.