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Grooming Your Golden Retriever

Grooming your Golden Retriever is a never ending process.  The entire process should be down once or twice a week, and will take you around a ½ an hour of time.  Brushing your dog while he is shedding will help to control shedding quite a bit.  While outside, if your Golden Retriever manages to get burs or other defects in his hair, you should instantly take a few moments of your time and get the burs or other matter out of his coat.

When you groom your pet, you should always start with a good brushing.  Brush his entire body, then once you have finished brushing you can switch to a comb to get out any loose hair that remains in the coat.  While you are getting out the hair, you can also inspect your pet for ticks, fleas, and other types of skin ailments.  If you wish, you can also check his ears and trim his nails as well.

Bathing your Golden is essential to grooming, and can be somewhat complicated.  Before you attempt to give him a bath, you should always brush him first, to get rid of tangles.  During shampooing, you should always use shampoos that are specifically for dogs, since human shampoo can dry a dog’s skin out.  You don’t need to bathe your dog often, once every other week is good enough.  If you properly maintain your Golden’s coat, you’ll find it’s much easier to clean.

To prevent matting, which is very common with Golden Retrievers, you should always make sure that you brush your pet on a daily basis.  Metal combs and brushes work extremely well, and will help you to get a great deal of the hair out.  Although some people choose to use scissors and cut the mats, you can easily injure your Golden if he happens to move or jerk.  Scissors aren’t recommended, as brushing and proper bathing will help to prevent matting of the hair better than anything else.

When you cut your dogs nails, you should trim them a great deal, all the while avoiding going down into the quick.  You should never let your Golden’s nails get too long, as long nails can easily take the shape of the dog’s foot, resulting in a splay.  Therefore, you should always check your Golden Retriever’s nails and trim them every few weeks.  If you trim them just right, you’ll have at least 2 weeks before they need to be trimmed again.  If you do happen to trim the nails past the quick, bleeding will occur.  To stop the bleeding, always keep some styptic powder on hand to make sure that you are prepared if you do make a mistake.

With other types of grooming, you should also make sure that you clean your Golden’s ears as well.  They can get ear infections quite easily, if you don’t clean their ears on a regular basis.  To get the best results and protect your pet from ear infections, you should clean his ears once a week using a quality cleansing solution.  This way, you can rest assured that your Golden has healthy ears.

Grooming is an essential aspect to the health of every Golden Retriever.  All it takes is a little bit of time from your day to groom your pet and keep him healthy.  If you don’t have the time to groom your Golden, you can always take him to a professional.  Whether you do it yourself or take your Golden to a pro – grooming is something that simply must be done.

Grooming Your Golden Retriever courtesy Dog Articles.

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The Joy Of Attending A Live Dog Show

The atmosphere of most any dog show is that if extreme excitement and happiness, almost too exciting, especially during the early hours of the show day.  Everyone arriving is wearing a smile, even if a bit forced and tense, everyone is wearing his or her best manners as well as best clothes.  They are waving hello to friends they haven’t seen for almost a year as well as to those they saw just last night.  Most are hurrying to find a spot to place their equipment so that they can rush to get their car parked, rush to get a ringside seat, so that they can place an article on it, and rush back to prepare their dogs for the big entrance into the ring.

Meanwhile, under the handler’s tent the job of cleaning up the dogs after their journey goes on with a last-minute check on trimming, a last-minute check of the show lead, a bit more combing and brushing, with many fingers crossed and silent prayers being said.  Thermos bottles of steaming hot coffee are very much in evidence, so much so that a crate top or table top will be completely covered with plastic or paper cups, some full of coffee, some emptied.

On one table a dog is being sprayed with something that smells like perfume but which is actually just giving a shine to the coat.  Another dog will be getting a rubdown with something that smells like alcohol.  It is being used to wipe away the dust which has been attracted to the dark sleek coat.  Nearby, someone is furiously throwing medicinally scented talcum powder on the snow-white coat of his charge who either is still wet from a bath or who did not get a bath and whose owner is now trying to whiten him with the powder (This powder must be completely removed before the dog is shown).

Almost every crate or table has a bucket or pan of water setting on it or under it or next to it, and frequently a nervous person will drop some piece of equipment into it or stumble over it and get his new suit all splashed.  Every so often a dog will look longingly at a bucket of water and get tired of waiting until it is offered to him, jump down from his crate, and help himself until the owner is able to reach him and place him on the table again, where he must then be all dried off with a towel.

Occasionally you will hear the shouts of congratulations from a happy group gathering to look over a dog who has just made a nice win, and occasionally you will hear a warning cry go up from someone who did not carefully lock the exercise pen and from which one or two or more dogs are making their escape, or from someone whose dog has decided to take a piece out of another dog and who needs help in separating the quarreling dogs.  You will hear high-pitched barks, deep, low barks, yelps, howls, growls, and all the other types of canine noises.  If you look over your shoulder you are bound to see a young woman crying, either because her dog has just won or because her dog has not won either one can bring on the tears.

The Joy Of Attending A Live Dog Show courtesy of Dog Articles.

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