Use These Puppy Grooming Tips to Improve Your Pet’s Experience at the Groomers for Life
Taking your puppy to be groomed for the first time is a celebratory occasion. It’s like your kid’s first haircut, only your kids a little furrier and walks on four legs. The first experience your puppy has at the groomers sets the tone for how they feel about the grooming process for the rest of their life. You will want to make sure they are calm and enjoy the more indulgent sides of pet spa treatments.
The key is to acclimate your puppy. Many of the routines of puppy grooming can be done at home in an environment he’s already accustomed with. A puppy who is familiar with the process is much easier to work with than a pup who’s never had their paws touched. For a puppy, the dog grooming salon can be a scary place. Puppies have never been on a grooming table, heard clippers, or a loud blow dryer.
A reputable groomer should take a loving approach! Here are some amazing tips to make your puppy’s big day fun, not stressful.
We cannot stress this enough. Many times a puppy’s first bath is their first trip to the dog groomers. Even if this is the case pet parents can introduce a few of the stimuli a puppy will experience.
Nails
DO handle your Pup’s paws.
Puppies have an instinctual reaction to pull back when people first touch their paws. Initially, they don’t like it. With some gentle coaxing and loving massaging of their paws eventually, puppies begin to see it as any other form of petting. This is important!
When your dog groomer attempts to clip a puppy’s nails, it will be much easier for them to get through the process. Dogs needs to be still as possible in order for groomers to be able to clip the nail without hitting the quick—accidentally making a dog bleed. This can be very traumatic for a puppy. In many cases, a nail dremmel trims down the nail. This is loud. An experienced professional dog groomer will know when a puppy is too uncomfortable to proceed, but when a dog is already used to having their paws handled they are much more relaxed.
Nail clipping is vitally important for dogs. Overgrown nails lead to bad posture, infected ingrown nails, and a torqued spine.
Ears
DO handle their ears as puppies.
You will want to gain their trust with humans touching their ears. Another foreign experience for pups is having their ears cleaned. Puppies are still in the stage where the world is new to them. When a stranger goes in prodding around in their ear—they’re entitled to feel uncomfortable.
So, massage your puppies ears when you first take him home. Make sure he knows the feeling of having his ears played with is comforting. The ear cleaning process will feel like any other Tuesday to your pup who’s ready for his first puppy grooming.
Regular Brushing
DO brush your puppy often.
This is the first stage of grooming. Even if your puppy is a breed with a short coat, it is still important to brush their fur every day. Think of your dog’s coat as your own hair. You brush your hair every day to maintain hair length. Combing stimulates the hair follicles and is good for healthy hair.
The same is even more true for your dog. Brushing not only feels good to your dog but it removes hair that is naturally shedding. This will keep your house clean too! Another danger of not brushing a dog regularly is matting. Mats are interlocked hair that develops into painful knots in a dog’s coat. Dogs with thick coats are particularly susceptible to matting and need to be brushed often to eliminate mats from forming.
Love and Patience
A good groomer will most likely want to warm your puppy up to grooming with abbreviated sessions. They might first start out with a bath. The next time you come in, they’ll give them a hair trimming. The idea is to expose the more intense parts of grooming to a puppy slowly. This maintains the puppy’s confidence in the experience. Keeps things short and sweet!
A good groomer will also do their part in positive associates with the grooming experience. They will use a gentle loving touch and speak softly to your puppy—making sure he feels secure.
What you can do beforehand is make sure your pup is plenty exercised before taking the trip. This will curb their anxiousness. Also, bring their favorite blanket and toys for the car ride. Even traveling in a car is foreign to puppies and you’ll want to take your pup on a few drives without destinations to ensure riding in the car is enjoyable for them.
Give your puppy treats at each stage. When they get in the car and relax, treat time. When you arrive at the dog grooming salon, here’s a treat. This keeps your puppy’s association with the routine positive. This might seem excessive, but you’ll thank yourself later when trips to the groomers are a cordial affair between you and your dog.
Think of visiting dog groomers as a bonding experience between you and your pup. You get to spend some one-on-one time with him. Grooming is essential for a healthy and happy puppy even if they don’t know it yet.
DON’T scold your pup if he’s reluctant to get into the car. This only makes it worse by adding an element of negative reinforcement.
DO follow these methods with all trips, like going to the Veterinarian or dog training school.
So why do these myths exist?
The myth that cutting a puppy’s coat too early causes them to change colors is likely because puppies often change colors as they age.
It’s often the case that the outer, visible layer of puppy fur is a different color than the adult fur that is coming in underneath.
Cutting a puppy’s coat doesn’t change the color, it simply makes it visible more quickly.
The sudden difference in colors may surprise some owners, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t natural and wouldn’t happen on its own anyway.
As for the myth that cutting a puppy’s coat before their adult coat has a chance to grow-in can damage their adult coat, well, it’s simply a myth.
Hair is not alive. The follicles that grow hair are a part of a living body, but the actual strand of hair that we see is a “dead” collection of keratin.
Strands of hair, whether in a puppy or human, are not connected to any nerves, blood vessels, or anything else that would be able to send signals back to the body.
Thinking about this, it makes sense, as a haircut is completely painless because it is only affecting the strand of hair itself, although having hair pulled hurts because it is affecting the hair follicle.
There’s simply no way for your dog’s body to be confused or their coat to be ruined from a haircut.
The strands of hair that are cut when your puppy is trimmed have no way to communicate this with your puppy’s body.
I prefer not to give a full haircut to a dog on their first visit to the groomer. The first visit to the groomer is very overwhelming for a puppy. For many dogs, this is their first time away from mom and dad for an extended period of time. Even if you have already given your puppy a bath at home, the tub at the grooming shop looks and smells different. The groomers are brand new people, and there are so many sights and sounds that your puppy has never experienced before. Plus, puppies are fluffy balls of wiggle. So on top of a puppy wanting to see everything they can see, meet all the new friends they can, and just generally being a wiggle butt, any haircut attempted is, at best, very choppy and uneven, and at worst, potentially dangerous. So for the first visit, we like to do a bath, blow dry, nail clip, ear cleaning, full brush out and light trimming around their face and feet if needed. We will also turn on the clippers and hold them near the dog all while praising them and rewarding their good behavior. This is a great way to get your dog used to the groomer without trying too much.
All of them! “But I just have a lab puppy, why do I need a groomer?” Even for our customers whose dogs don’t need a haircut, we recommend bringing your puppy in young and often. So many times I get phone calls from people with senior dogs who have never been to a groomer. Their pups are now too old or delicate to be groomed at home and they are hoping for a professionals help. The problem here is, the groom will be more detrimental than beneficial. For our seniors, the grooming is just as overwhelming as it is for a puppy, but because they have never experienced the sights and sounds of a grooming salon, they can easily get hurt. Either from fighting against something they don’t want done, or from the stress of simply doing something new. If you can bring your lab puppy in every few months, even just for mainly nail trims, we can work to make them comfortable at the salon.
What if you just rescued a pup and they’re outside the age range mentioned above? Don’t worry! Give your new pup a few weeks to adjust to their new home and their new life before bringing them into the groomer. There is a lot of change happening in your new dogs life and we don’t want to give them more than they can handle.
In general, puppies should visit the groomer no earlier than 12 weeks to ensure that they have their first round of shots, and no later than 6 months. Ideally, we see a new puppy in between 12-16 weeks. The window for socialization starts to close for dogs at 4 months. This does not mean that you cannot acclimate your dog to grooming if they are outside of this window. It does mean that it can get harder to do the older they get. A one year old dog will most likely be much more stressed out by the grooming process than a 6 month old.
Think about it like the dentist. So many of us hate going to the dentist, so we put it off for years and years. When we finally cave and go in, we’re stressed out about what’s going to happen. Now imagine if you knew that you HAD to go to the dentist every 3 months. Would you like it? Probably not, but, you would hunker down and get it over with fairly pain free because you know what’s about to happen. By letting your dog get comfortable with their groomers and the grooming environment, you are setting your dog up for a lifetime of grooming success!
Puppy’s First Grooming Tips
If you have a little bundle of puppy joy at home, then you’re probably wondering when you should be taking your pup in for their first haircut. Well, I spoke to some groomers and found the answer…
Medium- and long-haired puppies should get their first haircut when they are 12 to 16 weeks old. This is only a trim and gets the dog used to being groomed. Short-haired puppies can visit a groomer at 12-16 weeks old to get used to grooming, without a haircut. Most dogs need their first proper haircut when they get their adult coats.
This article will tell you everything you need to know about puppy haircuts and what really happens when you leave your puppy at the groomer. We’ll also look at the dangers of giving the wrong haircut or shaving a puppy, so you know how to best take care of your little guy or gal.