How to Groom a Sheltie
My step-by-step guide to grooming your Sheltie at home, including advice on the best brushes, dematting techniques, and safe nail clipping.
Groom your Sheltie at home every week to address tangles, shedding, and debris. A thorough groom of the entire dog can take the best part of an hour.
How to groom a Sheltie: tangly mats vs shedding
Step 1: Line Brush The Undercoat
The most effective way to groom a Sheltie's undercoat is line brushing. Part the double coat horizontally down to the skin and systematically comb out the densest fur.
When there's no more loose fur coming out, move down an inch and part the fur in a horizontal line again. Move all the way down his back and down his furry little butt and tail.
Then target the loose undercoat on his chest (chestbeard), ribs (sidebody), and thighs (supercoarse rump). The back thigh area is particularly messy business because the undercoat is so coarse and dense.
I use the wide detangling comb for more precision, although many also swear by the undercoat rake for this undercoat stage of home grooming.
Step 2: Precision Comb The Wispy Fur
Now brush out the long, wispy fur behind the ears, using your fingertips to feel for little bulbs of matted fur at the base.
The same goes for under the armpits, legs (legpits?) and underbelly. Naturally, your Sheltie is lying on his back at this point, paws flopped in the air, looking at you lovingly and/or like you're insane.
This whole stage requires a smaller tool for precision combing of those small, sensitive areas. I use a fine-toothed comb for this thinner fur. You can also use the comb to pick out small mats.
However, tight mats near the skin can be painful for your dog, so take it easy. The best approach is to pinch the fur at the base, take the tension in your fingers, and tease out the mat gently and repetitively.
Step 3: Trim Out Any Mats
Mats that are too difficult or stressful to comb out can and should be trimmed out for your own sanity.
When the mat is close to the skin, snip carefully and avoid pulling the fur taught, as this can draw the skin into the path of the scissors. Instead, hold the fur loosely and cut in small, gentle snips until the entire mat is free.
Dog skin is far thinner than human skin. So if you're not confident with your snipping accuracy, choose a pair of safety pet scissors with rounded edges. Otherwise, any small sharp scissors do the trick.
Step 4: Brush The Rough Outercoat
Finally, run a slicker brush down the outercoat in long strokes. Follow the direction of the hair growth.
This finishes the weatherproof outercoat, removing tangles, debris, and loose hairs, while distributing the natural oils. Allow your slicker brush to reach down to the skin to stimulate bloodflow and improve circulation.
How to Trim Your Dog's Nails
About once a month, trim your Sheltie's nails and the overgrown fur that extends between the paw pads.
The goal is to keep his nails just short enough that they're not touching the ground. Overgrown claws arch a dog's toes backwards, forcing him to walk on the back of his paws, which puts extra strain on the tendons which ultimately causes limping and arthritis.
Step 1: Trim The Nails
Use guillotine-style dog nail clippers and with a white claw which is found amongst the white fur. Trim off the hook of the nail with the cutting blade facing you. Make the cut top-down, as trimming dog nails sideways can causing crushing and splintering.
Trim only the hooked end of the dog nail and avoid the inner quick.
- Make small cuts of 1-3mm
- Avoid cutting blood-lined quick
- See the pink quick through white claws
- Mimic the same size cuts on black claws
- A gray/pink oval immediately precedes the quick!
Remember to trim the dew claws! These little rascals are thin "thumb" nails on the inner legs. They're vestigical structures; remnants of a fifth toe that are evolving out since they don't have much (if any) purpose. If allowed to overgrow, they curl right round in a circle.
Shelties don't usualy have dew claws on their back legs, although it's worth checking if they have mixed recent ancestry. Unlike the front dew claws, the rear dew claws are not attached to the bone so vets tend to remove them to prevent snagging.
Step 2: Trim The Fur
Use scissors to trim the overgrown fur on the bottom of the paws until it's flush with the pads.
Use a small, sharp pair of scissors but be careful not to angle them inwards. Doing so risks cutting the hidden webbing between his pads. This is just like the webbing between our fingers and toes. Finally, trim the fur around the outside of the paw into a neat arch.
Sheltie paws: before and after fur and nail trimming.
How to Bathe a Shetland Sheepdog
Shampoo your Sheltie every 1-2 months to thoroughly clean her skin and fur. If you wash her much more than this you'll keep stripping away the coat's natural oils, causing dryness, flaking and itching.
For this exercise—and it is an exercise—you'll need a shower, dog shampoo, an old towel, and a strong back. Oh, and your dog. Probably should have put him first.
Choose a dog shampoo that's designed for dogs with double coats to help exfoliate the skin while loosening old undercoat to reduce shedding. If your Sheltie has dry or sensitive skin, consider a hypoallergenic shampoo for thick coats.
Thoroughly soak your Sheltie in the tub with warm water, line parting as you go to fully drench the undercoat. The phrase "water off a duck's back" springs to mind here. You'll see that the waterproof outercoat resists getting wet, while the many layers of fur underneath help shield your pooch from your watery whims.
The best strategy is to drench to lower half the body first with the shower head right up against her skin. Shampoo that half, giving your Sheltie a nice scratch and some kind words of encouragement, then rinse it all out thoroughly. Try not to leave any shampoo residue behind as it'll itch and irritate her skin later.
Watch your Sheltie shrink - Deborah White Duffy
Then move on to the top half of her body. Be careful around her ear canals, which are much larger and angled differently to ours, so the shower water will squirt right in there. This creates a risk of ear infection as bacteria love warm, damp body parts. You can plug her ears with cotton balls, or just mind the angle of your shower nozzle.
Shampooing a Sheltie takes a lot longer than doing your own hair because there's just so much of it. This is where the backache comes in, as you'll be bending over and holding your wriggly Sheltie still for at least fifteen minutes straight.
Toby quite likes his bath - Kim Zikmund
After bathing, gently pat your dog dry with a towel. Don't rub her or you'll damage the undercoat which, like human hair, is more prone to breakage when wet. Then allow her to dry off naturally indoors, or outside if the weather's warm. If your furniture can't take a wet Sheltie rubbing herself all over it, carefully blow dry the coat on a low setting, parting the hair as you go. Wait until the coat is fully dry before brushing. Voila.
When to Groom Your Sheltie
While professional breeders admit to grooming their Shelties every day, a more realistic goal is to brush your pet Sheltie weekly. The more often you groom your Sheltie, the quicker the job because less matting and undercoat can accumulate.
Bear in mind that while Shelties have a large molt (a whopper shed of their fur) at the beginning of summer, un-spayed females also shed more heavily at every heat cycle (every 6-8 months). At these times, you'll need to groom your Sheltie more frequently to address the extra loss of undercoat.
Sheltie puppies hardly shed at all. The fur is relatively short, while the fluffy undercoat is underdeveloped. Grooming a puppy is a matter of running a comb through his fur once a week, with more focus behind the ears and under his leg joints.
Grooming is a quick job in puppies.
Around 5-6 six months old, your puppy will start developing the classic double Sheltie coat. That's when you need to step-up your grooming routine.
Howard had long tangly fur and a thick undercoat by 8 months old as seen here.
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To learn more about the wonderful world of Shetland Sheepdogs, download my 160-page PDF ebook, Shelties: The Complete Pet Owner's Guide, now in its fifth edition. The guide features hands-on advice on raising a Sheltie illustrated with 100+ photos from Sheltie owners around the world. It's much loved by those who followed the adventures of Howard and Piper Woofington Moon, the inspiration behind Sheltie Planet. |
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