Pump Up The Volume
in your coat
How to Deal with Out of Coat Situations
If your dogs are like mine,
they seem to know just when a really important show is coming
up and decide to throw coat. Out it comes, bucket loads of it.
This is particularly disastrous if you have a double coated breed
that is like a road racing goanna without the full complement of
what nature required and judges deem necessary.
There you are, faced with your previously glamorous Sheltie, your
once magnificent Malamute or your severely denuded Samoyed. You've
got the picture. Lots of breeds blow coat and it seems to take
forever to get them back to show bloom despite every
coat growing powder known to man. What to do?
Well I don't wait for nature to take its course and instead resort
to human intervention. There are ways and means to get that scrappy
excuse for a coat to look fairly passable. Firstly, get rid of
the old coat as quickly as possible. Strip it, wash it, blow it
out - whatever!
Now bath the dog with a 5 to 1 solution of Body Building shampoo
i.e. 5 parts water to 1 part Shampoo. The aim is to boof this
coat up and bodify it WITHOUT making it stiff and unnatural.
Next step is NOT to use conditioner. Conditioner will flatten
and lay down whatever coat is there. We want it standing up and
looking at us! If you must have some moisturizing product in the
coat then use something that disentangles and moisturizes yet
doesn't soften or flatten, such as
PP
Revivacoat. You put this on and leave it in. Do not wash
out.
Now here is the nitty gritty
of the whole thing. We want to dry this coat so it will make 3
hairs look like 3 thousand. Enter stage right -
Plush Puppy Volumising Cream. This stuff
is fabulous. We recently showed a bitch who was quite literally
near bald and had only blown coat 2 weeks previously. I fluffed
and puffed this coat and she won.
All I did was apply a generous amount to all the depleted areas
and rubbed it into the coat to cover each hair. Then I used a
strong cattle dryer - there are various cool air, forceful air
type dryers around - and literally blasted the coat to stand up
on end. Blow the coat from the rear end, forwards to the head,
against the growth of the hair. You will want to achieve as much
root lift as possible as once the coat is dry and the dog has
a good shake, it will settle down into it's rightful place but
amazingly with a lot more oomph and volume.
Then on the day of the show, you will need to puff up and revitalize
the coat once again. If possible, do as the Americans do and bring
your dryer with you and try to find some power to plug in. Yes,
they all do it. Some even lug their portable generator around
too.
It depends how important the show is to you. Failing that, at
least use something that has a light bodifier in it without undue
stickiness. I use the PP Quick
Fix Conditioner that is loaded with milk fats that will
not only aid you in brushing the coat to shape but again coat
the hair lightly. If you have a finer textured type of coat to
work with, then just break the
PP
Quick Fix Conditioner down to equal parts of water and
product and spray on as you brush up. Don't make it too wet. I
use an oval pin brush.
I then go through the coat
with a wide toothed comb that has teeth roughly an inch and a
half long. I work every hair through that comb ensuring every
hair counts and combing it from skin to end. Use a fine toothed
flea type comb for the ears and a slightly wider toothed small
comb for the face and short leg hair etc. I then try to fluff
up once more with the dryer if it is available.
Look at the silhouette of your dog. It may not have as much hair
as it should but with judicious balancing of the dogs body weight
leading up to the show - just stack a touch extra on him - he
will most likely cut a rather nice figure. The judge will see
he doesn't have as much coat as he would perhaps like but if the
shape and silhouette is there then you have a fighting chance
when up till then you had none.
Some swear by mousses and
stuff but I for one prefer a more natural than sticky harsh feel
to the coat. If we must intervene, then lets at least make the
coats look like they belong to a dog and yet at the same time
look as good as possible. I hope you get to win a few more awards
than you might previously have done. After all, what would our
weekends be without going to a dog show?
CHERYL LECOURT
