Don’t buy a long coated breed of cat or dog if you don’t like grooming

Do you like to spend about an hour a day grooming your long haired pet? How about 30 minutes? You don't! Then why did you get a dog or cat that has a coat that is high maintenance?

I have a neighbor who has the cutest Pomeranian. The first summer she had his coat clipped short. I thought is was due to the heat but as most long haired dog owners know, the long coat also insulates the dog from the hot sun. Then came winter and the little dogs coat was still very short……….she had clipped him again. We have cold winters here – it snows. So now I realized that she did not want to deal with the long full coat that a pom has. It makes me wonder why people get a dog or cat with a long coat only to trim it off.

Then you have people like me who love to spend time grooming their dogs…….to me it is very relaxing. I have a book on dog grooming that I would highly recommend. It is called The Everything Dog Grooming Book. The book has little tips like how to use Listerene and water to make the dogs coat shine, how to express the anal glands and how to trim hair to cover-up conformation flaws.