Shedding and Coat Blow
Why low shedding does not mean low maintenance
Shedding and Coat Blow Are Not the Same Thing
Every animal with hair loses some of it constantly. That is shedding, it happens all year, and the answer to it is a brush and a vacuum.
Coat blow is a different event. A double coated animal drops its entire undercoat over a few weeks, usually twice a year, and the quantity genuinely shocks people the first time. It comes out in sheets and tufts rather than individual hairs, and no amount of ordinary brushing keeps up with it.
Breeds that do this include Turkish Van, Chartreux, Nebelung, Cymric, British Longhair, American Bobtail, Pixiebob, Chausie, Lykoi, Kurilian Bobtail.
Notice that cats are on that list. Coat blow is assumed to be a dog problem, and a Maine Coon owner in April finds out otherwise.
The distinction matters because the two need different responses. Steady shedding is a housekeeping problem. Coat blow is a grooming appointment, and it is worth booking one rather than fighting it at home with the brush you use the rest of the year.
How often your breed needs booking
There is a third kind that happens only once. Between six and twelve months a puppy sheds out its entire puppy coat as the adult one comes through, and on a curly breed those are the hardest few months of its life to stay on top of.
Which Coats Mat the Most
The reasonable assumption is that the more a coat sheds, the more it mats. It is not that simple, and getting it wrong is expensive in both directions.
Matting is worst at both ends of the scale, and the two ends get there by opposite routes. A heavy shedder like a Samoyed mats because the dead undercoat has nowhere to fall, so it stays in the coat and compacts against the skin. A low shedder like a Poodle mats because the hair never leaves in the first place.
The comfortable place to be is the middle. A Labrador or a Beagle drops its dead hair on your floor, which is annoying and is also the coat solving its own problem.
Hairless breeds are the exception that explains itself. There is no coat to felt, so they have a skin routine instead, and it is more frequent than most coated dogs.
Low Shedding Is Not Low Maintenance
This is the sentence that costs owners the most money.
The coats that need the most work are largely the ones sold on the promise that they barely shed. Both things are true at once and they are not in tension: the hair is not falling on your sofa precisely because it is staying in the coat, and hair that stays in the coat is what a mat is made of.
Breeds that shed little and mat badly include Afghan Hound, Aussiedoodle, Barbet, Bedlington Terrier, Bernedoodle, Bichon Frise, Bolognese, Cavachon, Cavapoo, Cesky Terrier, Cockapoo, Coton de Tulear, Giant Schnauzer, Goldendoodle, Havanese, Irish Water Spaniel, Kerry Blue Terrier, Komondor.
Low shedding does not mean less hair. It means the hair is your problem to remove rather than your vacuum's. None of that makes them bad dogs to own, but it does make the brushing routine compulsory rather than optional, which is the part nobody mentions at the point of sale.
Shaving Will Not Stop the Shedding
Every groomer hears this one in spring. The dog is dropping hair everywhere, so take it all off and start again.
It does not work, because shaving does not change how much hair is released. The follicles carry on doing what they were doing. All that changes is the length of what lands on the carpet, so instead of long hairs you can see and pick up, you get short ones that weave into upholstery.
Worse, on a double coat it does real damage, and these are the breeds where it is most often asked for and most often refused: Golden Retriever, German Shepherd, Australian Cattle Dog, Basset Hound, Beagle, Newfoundland, Labrador Retriever, Border Collie, Pomeranian, Pug, Siberian, Siberian Husky, Australian Shepherd, Bernese Mountain Dog.
On those coats the guard hairs and the undercoat do different jobs and a clipper takes both. What grows back is frequently undercoat first, softer and denser and worse at everything the original coat did, including keeping the dog cool. A shaved double coat is not a cooler dog, it is one with less protection from the sun.
The thing that does work is unglamorous. Get the dead undercoat out. A coat with the loose hair removed sheds far less into the house, and it does it without costing the coat.
What Hypoallergenic Actually Means
Plenty of people buy a low shedding breed because somebody in the house reacts to dogs. It is worth knowing what the evidence says before spending on that basis.
The protein most people react to is Can f 1, and it is carried in saliva, skin and urine rather than in hair. Hair is what moves it around the house, not what causes the reaction.
A study published in the American Journal of Rhinology and Allergy in 2011 measured Can f 1 in homes with breeds marketed as hypoallergenic and in homes with every other kind of dog, and found no lower levels in the first group. Readings taken from hair and coat samples were in fact higher on the supposedly hypoallergenic dogs. Detectable Can f 1 turned up in about ninety four percent of one dog homes regardless of breed.
A low shedding coat may well move less allergen around a room, and that is a real difference worth having. It is not the same as the dog producing less of it, and no breed is free of it. If somebody in the house has a diagnosed allergy, that is a conversation with their doctor rather than with a breeder.
How to Get Shedding Under Control
De shedding is a process rather than a tool, and the order is what makes it work.
- Bathe first. Washing loosens the dead undercoat and lifts it away from the skin. Pulling a blown coat out dry is slower and far less comfortable for the dog.
- The dryer does most of the work. A high velocity dryer blows loose undercoat out of the coat and removes more in ten minutes than an hour of brushing. This is the part a home setup cannot really replicate.
- Then rake, do not brush. An undercoat rake reaches through the top coat. A slicker mostly tidies the surface.
- Never a clipper on a double coat, for the reasons above.
With cats the same job has a second benefit. Hair a cat removes by grooming itself goes down its throat, and a cat in heavy shed swallows a great deal of it. Brushing is the simplest way to cut down what it swallows, which is worth doing for any cat bringing up hairballs regularly.
Look Up Your Own Breed
How much a coat drops and how much work it needs are two different questions with two different answers, and both are on the breed guide.
Your Breed
Shedding, matting risk and whether the coat may be clipped, breed by breed.
Find your breed →Matting
What happens when a coat has already gone, and what can and cannot be undone.
Read the guide →What It Costs
Why a de shedding treatment is usually priced as its own service.
See typical prices →