Care of the coat in pictures

Care of the coat in pictures (slide-projecting): kozmetika.ppt (2,47 MBytes)

Cosmetics Of Puli For Beginners

The main task of dog cosmetics is to keep the dogs clean, to groom them in a proper way and to cut, trim and brush the hair of dogs competing on dogshows according to the requirements of the standards.

It is better to groom our dog on a table and pulis can get used to it as well as other dogs. It is very important to make this grooming experience a good one. Young dogs should be treated with great patience and we must praise them as much as we can.

In case of bringing to dog cosmetician we ought to stay beside our puli in the first times to give comfort. An honest cosmetician will not refuse our demand.

Puppy Puli

Their hair needs not much work, it should only be kept clean. We should not bath them except very unique cases. Our puppy should be fed with quality food and be treated against fleas and worms several times.

The First Treatment Of The Young Puli

Depending on the inherited quality of the hair, this treatment happens at the age of 6-10 months. We see when the fluffy hair grows over the spiral or wavy cover hair and the texture of the whole coat becomes rougher.

This coat texture tears lenghtwise just like linen and using up this feature we can make the very unique embroided or stripped look.

On a table, with the dog lying on one side is the easiest way to work on the coat. For the tearing method we should choose a direction: from the nose to the tail or from the pads to the backbone. We should take the natural width of the locks into consideration, but never make them thinner than a thumb because later they will get sticked and twisted together.

On the head and legs the locks are naturally thinner than on the other parts, these need no halving at all.

We can wet our hands during the grooming for we collect the fallen fluffy hair.

The skin of the ear is so easy to tear! Here the coat contains more fluffy hair and it is hard to work on this area. So for tearing the coat of the ear we should cut the hair with scissors or should tear from the opposite direction – from the skin.

Down on the spine (from the withersto the sacrum) we make a parting to make the backline visible. Then we do the general grooming.

Then we the the general grooming.

General Grooming

Keeping the eyes clean

We wipe the corners of the eyes with a pad of gauze or a piece of cotton wool damped with warm water. If we find some catarrhal (white or yellow coloured) secretion, we should ask our vet about this.

Keeping the outer auditory meatus clean

The hair growing in the outer auditory meatus should be removed regularly. The frequency of this removing method depends on the quality of the hair – in other words when the grown hair hinders the natural airing and cleaning of the ears.
Removing the hair from the auditory meatus is very unpleasant for the dog. Unpatiant, violent, rough treatment can harden the grooming method forever. If we try several times in a very considerate way we can manage to make the dog tolerate it with patience.

Pulling the auricle a bit up and backwards, we stick our thumb and forefinger into the auditory meatus carefully and little by little amount we tear the floffy hair out.

We can use dull artery forceps for this, but in this case one other person should hold the head of the dog secure to avoid accidents.

We should wipe the auditory meatus clean as well.

Twist a pad of gause around our finger and drop some ear-cleaner liquid (OTIFREE, SPECICARE) on it, then clean the auditory meatus and the littke curves of the outer ear very-very carefully. We can use a pinece of cotton pinched on the artery forceps if we have somebody else to secure the dog.

When we find brown secretion in bulk and/or the dog scratches its ears we should ask the vet.

Keeping the foreface clean

If it is possible, never give liquid food to your pulis. The hair around their mouth can be cleaned only by soaking. This method is not for everyday use and it is very uncomfortable for the dog, too. We should shorten the hair growing too long and disturbing the mouth. The locks gown longer than the nasal plane should be equalized around.

Keeping the anus and the genitals clean

On these parts of the body the coat should be short . The glands around the anus should be emptied regularly. The dog cosmetician or the vet does this expertly and the owner can learn the method from them too.

Keeping the pads clean

The hair grown longer than the feet and finger pads should be cut with scissors and we can cut the hair growing on the fingers to the claws, around.

Shortening of the claws can be also required if the gound is not enough to wear them down. There are nerves inside the claws so their cutting can be done only by an expeienced person and just with an adequate device.

The dry and chapped skin of the fingers and pads should be treated with sylicone hand creme or special pad-creme for dogs.

Bathing

When we decide the frequecy of bathing we should consider many circumstances. For example:

- On what kind of ground we keep the dog?

- Is our dog allowed to come to the house? (to bed?)

- Are we planing to go to dogshow soon?

- Is he on heat? Has she got a litter? Did she have diarrhoea?

We can say bathing is needed only when the owner feels it is high time to do it. Before bathing we tear the shabby coat, get the plants out of it and empty the glands around the anus.

The most efficient way of puli bathing is to soak him: fill a tube with water (till it reaches the neck of the dog) and put shampoo in it. We can repeat the soaking if it is required. After getting the dog out of this water we work some more on the filthy body parts with diluted shampoo. These parts are usually the chops, the area under the auricle, the hair o the chest, the anal and genital area and the pads.

We must not rub the locks in process of formation of young pulis.

Finally we rinse them with clean water thoroughly. Out of competing period and in wintertime I use hair balm to compensate the frequent and strong effect of shampooing.

After working the balm thoroughly into the hair I rinse it with clear water.

Before dogshows use diluted beer to rinse the shampoo off and you will get the coat condition desired.

For filthy, greasy hair I use WU-2, for less dirty coat herbal shampoo and for puppies I use baby shampoo. Among the balms I found the Golf (by Schwarzkopf) the most suitable.

After finishing bathing we should twist the coat around the whole dog, started from up and going lower.

We lay our dog on a towel and we press the water out with many dry towels, bunch of hair by bunch of hair. In the meantime we may use the hair drier, too. When we want to dry an adult dog in full coat, we should do this drying method several times during the 24 hours of the day.

Of course we cannot let our dog out of the house when the weather outside is not hot enough. After bathing we can cut the claws and we can get the feet and the finger pads in order.

When the puli is half or fully dried we can tear her hair again. It takes several days until the coat gets its original style back, we should think of this before the show.

Using insecticides (Neostomosan, Neocidol) is needed in case of neglected and full-of-fleas dogs only. These chemicals should be spread on the dog after shapooing and we should let them dry.

The solving of the felted, shaggy coat; cutting according to the breed requirements

In this case we need strong, straight and sharp, short bladed scissors. We should try to estimate how much hair we can leave (to tear later). It may be only 2 centimeters but it is still better than making the dog naked by a rasor machine. Dogs need their coat for physiological consideration, too, so we can cut it only for very good cause.

We make smaller pieces of the felted hair, shorten them with scissors and then tear them (start the tearing from the skin) and remove the fluffy hair.

Where the shortened hair cannot be torn up, we cut it with scissors. According to the breed requirements the eyes should stay covered by hair after cutting.

After grooming, bathing and drying we make the shape of the hair of the head round, that of the body and the legs cylindrical. In brief this is the shaping of a young puli.

Keeping Conditions, Feeding

Puli puppies need optimal nutrients and keeping circumstances for the manifestation of the inherited qualities of hair (and other inner-outer features) .

- Dog is in the order of carnivorus animals – therefore they should get adequate food. There are also very good skin and hair improoving nutrient additonals and it worths using them.

- We should treat our dog against worms and fleas regularly. for pulis the spot-on products are the most suitable against fleas (Frontline, Ex-Spot, Advantage). Vermifuges are given by the vet.

- Eyes, ears and anal glands should be take care of!

- The place where we keep our dog should be kept clean, we have to wipe out the weeeds in our garden (for examplre: thistle, Hungarian grass, awn).

Wishing you joyful dog cosmetics: