In this section, I am going to go through some of my top tips to keeping your dog fit and healthy and in tip-top condition. Now I am doing these tips here in the surgery but they are generally things that you can do yourself at home.
We're going to start off with probably one of the most important and that's grooming. Now grooming is just a great way of checking your dog over on a regular basis. If you groom him from head to toe, you'll pick up any problems such as lumps or bumps, grazes, cuts, scratches, straight away without having to wait until they get more serious.
So, it's a good idea to groom your dog on a regular basis. If you've got a longish head dog, I mean Jack is a reasonably long head and we groom him every couple of days. If you got a very long head dog an afghan hound where there could be curtains of hair, then you really groom them everyday just to stop them getting matched.
Now the equipment you need, a grooming brush like this is ideal. It's got two sides. It has got a brush here just for making the finishing the coat off to make it look nice and clean and this side here with the metal section there, that's just for stripping out the dead fur, and that's very good for getting the fur sorted out.
So really grooming is a very straight forward thing. Just grooming away on the dog with the stripping brush to get rid of all that loose dead hair and then face off with the other brush just to match it all down, make it look little nice and shiny.
Now Jack is pretty well behaved, so it's not too much of a trauma but if your dog runs away of the very size of the grooming brush, then the best tip is to get them used to it gradually and the best way to do that is where the good old treat.
So just may be not even the grooming brush to begin with, just getting used to being stroked all over and associated that with something nice like a treat. Then gradually bring the grooming brush in, just not even properly grooming. So just letting the grooming brush fall onto the dog just gently, brushing very gently giving tidbits as you go and build up from a few seconds to a few minutes, then you should find the quite good dog, gets the hang of being groomed and associates it with the pleasure of having tidbits rather than stressed that they used to have of being groomed.
So the main tip is regular grooming, hands on, all over your dog. You'll pick up lumps and bumps and it also keep that coat looking great.
Along side of your normal grooming process. Another good tip is whenever your dog has been out running through the grass especially in the summer and especially if my Jack. There are fairly hairy kind of dogs spaniels in particular. It's important to check them for these little fellows. Now these are grass seeds and the little ounce of grass there and they are particularly dangerous because of their shape, because they are barbed shaped, they've got a pointed end and then they can be barbed. What can happen is they get trapped in the fur, generally around the feet. So in the fur between the toes or in the ears they get trapped in the fur here and then they just work their way and absolutely amazing how they can get in, because of that barbs and the movement of the dog, they just put that way in, they praise the skin, and they can cause intense pain infection and really serious problems.
So after every walk in the summer with a dog like Jack who is a hairy dog, check all of their feet. Just check between their toes, and make sure there's no grass seeds caught there. Have a quick look in the areas, check the area. Just make sure there's nothing there because if you can pick it out, it's no problem. If it stays there without being checked for even 12 hours or so, it will work its way and you won't get it and the next thing you know, your dog has kind of a really nasty air infection or a very painful which is going to need help from your vet.
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