A matting question (sorry!)
Oliver is a large, 13 month old male OES. Although we spent the first few months of his life in central London we moved to the Netherlands a while back and now live next to the North sea coast. Ollie runs on the beach and swims (splashes, really) in the sea most days and is a happy, well-exercised, well balanced Sheepie. But the flip side of that is our home is full of sand and he is always filthy! So we got the groomer to do a puppy cut on him and it looks great, and it is a lot easier to dry off. My question is now we are finding quite a lot of matts in his coat. Do people with more experience than me think the new shorter hair is actually causing the matts to form or were the matts there anyway beforehand but now we can just see them better? I do brush him every day and try to keep on top of it but there does seem to be an awful lot of them. Would a shaved cut be better? Thanks very much. Lee Netherlands |
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| oliver sounds lovely. If you are brushing him every day I shouldn't worry about the matts unless they bother him. Perhaps next time go shorter!
Are there photos in your camera thing....rushes off to look |
| No, the shorter hair shouldn't be causing more mats to form so they were probably there during the trim but you're noticing them now because his hair is shorter.
The problem with the mats is that they aren't ever going to get better. Mats breed more mats and if he's going in and out of the water, they could get moldy inside the mat or against the skin and cause some real irritation. If you can't work all the mats out, I think shaving him would be a smart thing to do. That way, you could start fresh and not have to worry about any of the trouble mats can cause. Another thought, if he's going in and out of salt water, can you give him a quick fresh water rinse after? The salt could be drying his hair out more, causing it to break and, consequently, more tangles with the different length hair. (A fresh water rinse before and after would be ideal since the fresh water would help fill the hair shaft and keep the salt water out. A double rinse may be too much trouble though!) |
| I have found if you keep the coat silky its so much easier to stay on top of the coat, try using Show Season detangle spray. I'm not usually a great user of detangle sprays but this one is fantastic, when you wash him towel dry then spray the coat all over this is left in but is better used when the coat is washed.
As a groomer I was very worried about this concept but I can honestly say it works on my oes and leaves her so soft and smelling wonderful. Normally if you wash the coat with matts the coat will just keep tightening up and become almost impossible to sort out. Sea water is really bad for the coat and will not help you at all, if possible I would keep him out until you have sorted the coat out. In my experience whether the coat is short or long you'll always get undercoat and its that, that will become matts. Give me a shout if you need any more help. Val |
| I would just say continually work on the matts.
It is the undercoat anyway, not the top coat that matts, at least in my experience with my water and mud loving hound. So unless you can reduce the undercoat they are going to be a "feature" whatever the length of the top coat. I would imagine with a shorter coat the effectiveness of brushing would get closer to the matts anyway and be less physically tiring. |
| If there are only a few really bad matts , can they be cut out? |
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