Grooming your Skye Terrier

Skye Terriers have a very distinctive appearance with a waterfall like coat which falls over their eyes and down their sides over their paws. Maintaining this coat isn’t as tricky as it looks.

Like all terriers, simply keeping up with the coat is enough to make your dog look beautiful at all times. This can be done with regular combings and the occasional bath. You can also take your dog to the groomer a couple times a year in order to get the coat professionally shaped and have the dead skin and hair properly removed. Skye Terriers do have to be socialized to grooming as they can be skittish in new situations and are prone to biting if they aren’t trained out of it at an early age.

Grooming a Skye Terrier properly is especially necessary after the dog gets wet or after it’s been playing as their coat is easy to tangle. Brush out your dog’s coat with a slicker brush, a pin brush and then a rake brush so that mats are prevented and the coat can be untangled after a day of playing. Always brush out your terrier before washing it as the undercoat gets very knotted when wet. Skye Terriers do shed, so keeping up a good grooming regimen is important if you want to keep your dog from shedding a lot of hair. The long overcoat should be smooth and straight whereas the undercoat is soft and kept close to the dog’s skin.

Different style if your dog is a show dog or not

This can change as the dog grows older, but the standard for shows remains that the overcoat is long and silken and the undercoat is shorter and softer. If you’re not putting your dog on show, you can clip their coat shorter for easier maintenance. Remember to clip your Skye Terrier’s nails, especially if you keep it with a long coat so that the nails won’t catch on anything. Also remember to brush your dog’s teeth a couple times a week so that your dog won’t fall prey to gingivitis.

You don’t have to bathe your Skye Terrier often, but when you do give your dog a bath, make sure to put cotton swabs in your dog’s ears as water can easily get into the ear canal and cause irritation or damage to your dog’s hearing. Never scrub your dog’s hair as this causes damage and breakages which makes your dog’s coat appear coarse and lank. Instead, gently massage the shampoo in and rinse it out again.

When you groom your Skye Terrier properly, your dog will look beautiful, with its coat hanging down over its paws and with the distinctive waterfall of hair over its face. Your dog will also appreciate a good grooming because their white coats are easy to get dirty and tangled, especially when wet and this can be uncomfortable. However, since a Skye Terrier, when properly trained, is fairly calm and friendly, it shouldn’t be too much of a task to groom your Skye Terrier regularly. This can be a fun task to do with your dog and the results will be wonderful to behold.