Five signs your dog is overdue for a groom

Your dog will never tell you it needs a groom. It will tell the couch, the car seats and whoever sits next to you at the braai. By then you are a few weeks late. Here are the five things we notice at the gate, and what each one is trying to say.

1. You can hear the nails on the floor

Click, click, click down the passage. If you can hear your dog walking on tiles, the nails are touching the ground before the pad does, which pushes the toes up and changes how the dog walks. Long nails are also the easiest thing on this list to fix. Nail clipping is in every one of our packages, so it is never a separate trip.

2. The smell arrives before the dog does

A healthy dog smells like a dog. An overdue dog smells like a damp towel left in a gym bag. The smell lives in the undercoat and the ears, which is why a quick hose in the garden does not shift it. A proper wash, a proper dry and an ear clean does.

3. Your fingers get stuck

Run your hand down the back of the thighs, under the collar and behind the ears. If your fingers catch, that is a mat forming. Mats are not just untidy. They pull on the skin every time the dog moves, and they trap moisture underneath, which is where hot spots start. Small knots brush out. Big mats have to be clipped, and the longer you wait, the shorter the cut has to be.

4. The head tilt and the scratching

Scratching at the ears, shaking the head, rubbing the face along the carpet. Often it is nothing more than wax and hair in the ear canal, and ear cleaning is part of every groom. If the ear smells yeasty or the dog yelps when you touch it, that is a vet visit first and a groom after.

5. The furniture is growing a coat

Loose fur on the couch, the car seats, the black jersey you only wore once. Brushing at home helps. A de-shedding treatment helps a lot more, because it pulls the dead undercoat out instead of moving it around. It is an add-on to any package: R50 for a small dog, R60 medium, R80 large and R100 for a giant.

So, how late are you?

If you ticked one, you are about on time. Two or three, book this week. Four or five, your dog is going to come back a different animal, and the house will smell like a house again.

The van comes to your gate. You need an outside tap and a plug point within reach of where it parks, and the groom takes between 35 minutes and an hour and a half depending on the size of the dog and the package. See the next open times near you.