Grooming
Grooming Your Sheepadoodle
In order to keep your Sheepadoodle in a long coat this can be a lot of hard work, but the results are worth it. I recommend brushing your pup or dog 5 to 10 minutes a day using a good pin brush (not a cheap one) that does not have balls on the end of the pins and or a good medium size bristle brush. We buy most of our dogs grooming supplies from Petco, Pet Edge http://www.petedge.com or at the dog shows (you can get some really good supplies at the shows).
PinBrush Bristle Brush
To help keep your puppy/dog mat free I recommend using several different brushes, combs and or rakes once a week and you should completely go over your pup/dog from head to toe (about a half hour to one hour of work), see examples below:
Slicker Brush Stagger Comb
Mat Removal Comb Pin Comb
Undercoat Rake Grooming Rake
When brushing your pup/dog always use a good leave in conditioner or detangler (we use Coat Handler™ Leave-In Conditioner), this helps with tangles and small mats and keeps your dog’s coat from getting too much breakage. Always brush and remove mats before bathing your dog.
Tim and I bath our dogs in our bathtub, we have a hand held shower head with a long hose and use slightly warm water. Use a whitening shampoo (Bio-Groom® Super White™ Shampoo) to keep your dog’s coat white. To help keep your dog’s beard white you can make a paste of cornstarch, water and a little lemon juice and leave on until dry and then brush or wash it out.
Get a good blow dryer and never use the hot setting when blow drying your dog.
Ears, toe pads and nails are very important to keep trimmed. We remove our dogs hair from the inside of their ears at least 6 times a year using scissors, hemostats and ear powder (aids in plucking the hair) or we have our groomer or vet do it for us. Each time we visit our vet or groomers we always ask to have ears, toe pads and nails groomed.
Because we live in an area that our dogs mat easily due to weather conditions (i.e. snow, rain and mud) we choose to shave our dogs 2-3 times a year. Their coats rarely get longer than 3-4 inches at a time. Our dogs do go to the groomers about every 6-8 weeks.
I’ve been asked this question many times, “Why is my dog’s coat changing from black to reddish or a brownish coloring?” This is called “sunning” or “sun bleaching” and is due to your dog being exposed to the outdoors. It is expected to happen as Sheepadoodles like to spend lots of time outdoors. There is not much you can do about it. You can have your dog’s coat trimmed often or shaved to remove the bleached coloring.
My best advice would be to find a good groomer, someone who is familiar with grooming OES and Poodles. Have the groomer recommend supplies you should buy and demonstrate to you how to groom your dog daily and a weekly grooming using the supplies you have purchased.
There are a lot of wonderful grooming videos on YouTube, the Internet and some wonderful articles. I’ve listed several sites to visit below for more information:
http://www.gpoesc.com/pdf_files/OES_Grooming.pdf
http://www.lakesongoes.com/grooming.htm
http://www.texasoesrescue.org/GroomingTheOES-new.htm
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