My daughter's dog, Charlie, is a very large mutt with hair that not just mats, it felts. We try to brush him occasionally, but the brush just catches on his hair. I bought some pet clippers (electric) and try to clip his hair that way sometimes, but the clippers overheat and seize up.
Mostly we ignore his dreadlocks. However, occasionally, the matting obstructs some of his, um, biological functioning, and cleaning up *that* mess is horrible, and I'm sure it's a horrible experience for Charlie as well. (This email is prompted by our coming home from vacation to find him in terrible shape. I don't know if our housesitter didn't notice the smell, or he just didn't want to deal with it. I had thought about trimming him before we left, but I didn't think his hair had grown too long back there, and I've been so busy, I had not made the time to take a close look at him, so it's partly my fault. Our housesitter was supposed to be staying at the house for the animals, but we get the sense he was not sleeping here.)
While the dogs are not supposed to be my responsibility, I seem to be the one who steps in to take care of them when something - like hair matting over a delicate area - goes wrong. (I love and enjoy our cats. I love and feel guilty around the dogs).
I'd really like to stay ahead of his hair matting. I would take him to a groomer, but he's a very big dog, and while I haven't priced grooming, I'm worried it would be $50 - $60 to shave a big dog, and that's just ridiculous in my book and in my budget.
On the other hand, with my electronic clippers burning out, what I end up doing is spending three hours, every four months or so, trying to carefully cut the felted fur away from his body with haircutting scissors. I usually can only get through part of him in that amount of time, so he's always a very lopsided looking dog.
Are there specific grooming tools for dogs with hair that mats like that? His quarterly haircut is a real chore. I'd love to be able to keep his hair short enough that it didn't felt together, but I don't have hours a month to try to brush him. I feel so bad for him, in spite of my insistence that I would have nothing to do with any dogs adopted into this family until I felt I was ready to give a dog the attention they deserve.
I'm attaching a photo I took of him *after* his last three hour haircut. It doesn't look like I accomplished anything at all. I'd happily spend $20-30 for a grooming tool that would allow me to spend ten minutes a day getting the dreadlocks out. Every other dog I've had has had short hair, and it's just been a matter of giving them a bath every year or so. I've never had such a high maintenance animal in my life. I literally do not know what to do to get his hair short and then keep it that way with a reasonable expenditure of money and time. I think it's frustrating to both him and me. I try to brush out the felted fur, but all the brush does is pull the hair out, and he yelps, so I stop. I try to cut it with scissors, and unless I'm moving at a glacial place, I invariably cut his skin, and I feel terrible about that. The electric clippers seem useless, (at least the $30 Walmart clippers. I can't see spending the prices at Petco for their shears). We've had years and years of an endless, losing, struggle with his hair.
Charlie by onequietbreath, on Flickr