Grooming your Cairn Terrier

Cairns are non-shedding dogs that have 2 coats, a soft undercoat and a coarse outer coat, because they do not shed they need to be stripped to remove the dead hair. Ideally the dog would grow out the coarse coat and when it was time to be stripped they would have the soft coat underneath, but in some cases there’s no soft undercoat and so when the dog is stripped it’s like starting all over.

Cairns shouldn’t be bathed frequently, once a month or so if sufficient unless they really need it, this helps to prevent their skin from drying out.

If you’re not willing to do the grooming yourself, find a groomer who can do the stripping by hand, they will help you keep up with the dogs grooming schedule based on it’s needs. If you’re going to do the grooming yourself there’s a few tools that are helpful to have on hand, a grooming table, scissors, a slicker brush and clean hands, which are particularly important when dealing with hair near the dog’s eyes, especially if you’re stripping them by hand.

Give Your Cairn Terrier a Face Lift

Even the shaggiest Cairn can turn into a beautiful dog with some well done grooming, dogs that look like they’re old and feeble turn into young looking pups again with a good wash and haircut. If you ever decide to adopt a Cairn from a shelter and when you meet him or her, you realize that they don’t look like what you’re searching for, ask about them, find out how old they are and what kind of grooming needs to be done in order to have them looking like themselves again. You’d be surprised that despite being time consuming, it doesn’t take much to have a Cairn looking like a million bucks.

While pulling at your dog’s hair may not seem normal for a grooming process it’s better for maintaining the texture of the hair, pulling small amounts of the longer hair will help get you accustomed to knowing which hair can be pulled and which hair cannot, the shorter and softer hair is good and should be left alone.

When trimming the head, brush all of the hair forward and then cut it so that the head is in the shape of a circle, giving their face a nice, round appearance, if there’s no undercoat to replace the outer hair just use thinning shears to trim and blend the hair.

Whether you do the grooming yourself or not a groomer will be able to provide you with tips on how to best maintain your dogs coat to keep it looking beautiful and healthy and a good looking dog is a happy dog.