SIBERIAN HUSKY ｜ Grooming

Oh my God. Hey guys, before we start, make sure you subscribe to my channel and give this video a thumbs up if you like it. Okay. As a husky mom, I get asked a lot of questions about their hair. Like, are they difficult to groom? Does it take a bajillion years? How much hair is there actually gonna be? If you saw my previous video about Siberian huskies, you'll know that the amount of hair they do shed is preposterous. But with the right tools and some patience, it's all pretty manageable. Here's how I groom my Siberian huskies. First, you gotta make sure you have the right tools. And in order to figure that out, it's best to understand exactly how a double-coated dog sheds. A husky's coat is made up of two parts. There's a long hair top coat, which is made up of guard hairs, and then the undercoat, which is this like fluffy, dense stuff. It's like super dense because that's what keeps them warm in the winter. What happens when a husky sheds is that the undercoat detaches from their skin, but the top coat stays just where it is. When I say that, it sounds really weird. Detaches. Detaches, it sounds gross. Because the undercoat is, well, under the top coat, sometimes it needs a little extra help coming off. And if we don't help it out, that's how dogs can get knots in their hair and their hair can get matted. And it just makes for an unhappy slash very hot dog. So what we have to do, our main goal here, is to figure out a way to get the undercoat off the dog while keeping the top coat where it is. With my first husky, it took a lot of trial and error to kind of figure out which was the right brush for us. First, we tried this boar brush, but it just never seemed to really get to the undercoat. It was kind of always on the surface. I tried this rubbery blue guy, which is supposed to pick hair up, but it kind of just, it picked up some of the undercoat, but it didn't really get all of it. I even tried the Furminator, which is really advanced. Like, it has this button that pushes the hair out. It's super fancy, but I didn't really like it as much, because even though it did get some of the undercoat out, it took off the top coat as well, like the guard hairs, and the dogs didn't really like it that much. Like, I would have to fight with them to use this brush, so it was short-lived. What I found works best for us is this really simple rake. I don't even know if they make this specific comb anymore, so I just found whatever I could find on the internet that was the closest to this, and put that in the description box below for you guys. Because the teeth are really long, it can get past the top coat, get to the undercoat, and pull that stuff out, but still keeping the top coat intact and not, like, breaking any of the top hairs on the dogs. I have this other kind of rake version, which was cool, but I like this really simple one better, because first off, the teeth are longer, as you can see, and then these kind of taper. I don't know if you can see here, but they're thicker at the base, and then they get skinnier, but I just felt like when I was brushing or combing the dogs I wasn't getting everything out. So this one, really super simple, has been my favorite tool. I've been using it for seven years. It's nothing fancy, it's not like rocket science, but it works so well. Before I start, I like to pull out any undercoat hairs that already made it past the top coat, and are kind of just sticking out. Mike always makes fun of me, because I can somehow see from across the room when there is pieces of undercoat sticking out of my dogs, and then I just go over there and pick them out. Then what I do is I start at the dog's butt and kind of work my way up, like always going in the direction of the hair, because you want this to be enjoyable for your dog BFF as well, and so they sit nice for you. When it's shedding season, my dogs generally shed from the butt up towards their head over time, so that's why I start there. You can kind of feel around with your fingers for any big clumps of undercoat that aren't attached to their skin, and you can kind of just work in that area that day, or start there. Then I use this guy with rubber teeth. He's got longer ones here, and then shorter ones up here, and I use that to kind of just get whatever loose hair is still on the dog off of them, and sometimes when I'm lazy, I use this to brush the couch as well when I'm too lazy to vacuum it. The other important piece of this whole thing is how often you groom your Husky. I comb my Huskies a little bit every single day. For me, it's the best way to get ahead of it, because like I said, they have a ridiculous amount of hair, so doing it all in one sitting may take forever, and also waiting too long in between could lead to knots and mats and just all around unhappy doggies. It also helps that I find combing them really relaxing and therapeutic, so it's like a nice little winding down thing to do at the end of the day, sitting in front of the TV with my dogs. Phoenix treats it like it's her daily spa time, and Falcon treats it like we're trying to torture her. Oh my God. And that brings me to my last point. It always helps if there's something in it for the dogs as well. So what I used to do when Phoenix was a puppy was I'd have her chew on something yummy while I was combing her, and that's why she treats it like her personal spa time, because she remembers, like, oh, this is a good time for me. I don't have to do that anymore now, because she just likes getting combed in general. For Falcon, well, we're working on it. So that's how I groom my Siberian Huskies. Hope that helped. And now before I go, I'd like to introduce a new segment I'm doing at the end of my show called This is a Pillow. All right, it's been real. I'll see you next time. Bye! Thanks for watching, guys. This is the part where I shamelessly promote my channel. Make sure you subscribe. There's a little button I put up here. And also give me all your thumbs and stuff. If you want to see my previous video, you can click here. If you want to see more dog stuff, you can click here. I'm letting my little hand flourish. That was stupid. And if you're watching this from some sort of mobile device that doesn't click, you can tap on this little eye button here for more fun stuff to watch. This episode has been brought to you by the letter I, which rhymes with bye. Bye!