Review: The FURminator: My Hero

Not that long ago I had lunch with a writer friend of mine, and we got to talking about my ten thousand animals.  She suggested that I use a furminator on our dogs to help strip out their winter coats and help prevent mats that might form too close to the skin and eventually cause serious sores.  She used a big one on her horses, and extolled the virtues of the might furminator to me while we had salad.  I was intrigued, but her description of the price tag made me flinch and file it under the category of pipe dream/luxury item.  I was under the impression it was an electric thingy, too, for whatever reason, and decided that I'd just shave the dogs if needed.

Then yesterday I ran into a friend of mine at Petco and she recommended it too (she uses a small one on her cats) so I caved and looked at them.  They're not electric.  I got a medium one for long-haired dogs for my dogs.  I'm glad I didn't get the large one partly because of the extra money, and partly because although it might have been worth it on the big sections, the larger comb would have made it harder to work on their legs and stuff.  And I was happy that it wasn't as expensive as the one my friend used on her horses.  Size makes the difference, it turns out.

Finn had way more undercoat than I realized he had.  Working with the regular undercoat puller I use, I would have cleaned up his hindquarters in a few minutes and considered my work done.  But running the furminator over his supposedly-clean back was enlightening.  Yikes.   I pulled almost as much undercoat off of him as I did Brian, Brian the Fluff Generator, Brian the Puffy Source of Endless Hair, Brian the ... you get the idea.  

For full-time (or in our case, mostly full-time) outdoor animals, pulling out the undercoat isn't just a matter of neatness or appearance.  Those old undercoats hold a lot of dirt, and way too much insulation value for our increasingly warm temperatures.  I'm really glad I helped Finn rid himself of it before August. Heck, if I hadn't pulled it, it might have hung around until his winter coat came in and shoved it off within reach of our normal brushes, and by then the dogs would have been dangerously filthy, even with baths.  It's just too hard to wash that stuff out, even using the awesome rubber brush to help work the suds in down toward the skin.  

Brian had some mats in his fur that I buzzed off so that I could save him some tugging prior to using the tool.  He hates having his mats pulled.  (So far I haven't let them go so long that they end up matted close to the skin but they are clingy ...)  It turns out that I shouldn't have buzzed them after all.  The furminator pulled out the remaining smaller mats very easily and Brian never gave me the 'owie mommy' look he does so often when I'm using a standard undercoat puller.  I ended up not shaving much around his seat and pulled the mats with just the furminator with no trouble at all.  It's kewl, though.  His tail looks a little funny right now, but he'll be fully feathered in no time.

Getting that undercoat out turned out to be especially gratifying in Brian's case.  Both dogs had dirty undercoats, but Brian's hair is a different consistency than Finn's more labrador retriever-like fur.  The dirty undercoat pulled free of his guard hairs and an almost pristine white summer undercoat.  It was almost as good as giving him a bath.  Combing with a nice bath, he'll be in excellent shape to endure the heat we'll most likely experience in August.  These dogs do really well in very cold temperatures, but tend to suffer in anything over 75 degrees F.  The last two years I've taken Brian to get shaved, and this year I planned to shave him myself (after buying a spacer--the one I like to use on him broke) but now I wonder if it might not be unnecessary.  I think just keeping him groomed, and taking him to the river on 90+ degree days, will be sufficient.

The girl sat down and (very gently) furminated Wizard, our big, fat, very happy and formerly feral tiger tabby shorthair cat.  He loved it.  As an experiment I ran a nice cat brush over him.  We didn't get much.  We ran the furminator over it and pulled lots of undercoat and dander along with it.  They have small ones for cats, but I think that we'll use the one for our dogs on the cats as needed, being careful not to push because the teeth on the one we have are sized for long-haired dogs.

Furminators are expensive, but I think they're worth it.  Now that I have one, I don't see any reason to visit a groomer, which will pay back the worth of the comb by next summer, and that's for an ultra-minimalist grooming schedule (once a year.)  

One minor note about the instructions.  They suggest bathing your animal first and letting it fully dry before using the comb.  In our case, I think it makes more sense to use the comb as a kind of dry bath.  And then, when we get around to a big, wet, soapy bath, we won't have to try to clean old, wooly undercoat hair that shouldn't be there in the first place.  And that undercoat really hinders getting the soap down to the skin and makes rinsing that soap out much more difficult.  

Half of Brian's pile.  The rest is outside.  Bear in mind we brushed him last week to get the worst of it off.

Also, because they're pricy, I suggest that folks living within a budget to shop around and maybe investigate getting a used one if possible.  If you do get a used one, be sure to clean it thoroughly and disinfect it in case the animal it was used on had a transmittable disease.  I don't usually recommend a particular vendor, but in this case, Amazon has one of the best prices for new ones available.

I'm happy with the tool.  The dogs enjoyed the attention, and are tons cleaner, lighter, and cooler.  Wins all around.

Update:  Carey is still not home.  We made some calls and put up ads on Craigslist.  We also left some fliers around town.  Keep your fingers crossed for us.  Thanks for your well-wishes.

Winter Musings

Brrrr ....

This is the kind of weather (below freezing, wind chill sending us into the realm of unnecessarily cold, having to put warm water out for the barn animals twice a day) that inspires me to write a simplified life book. More on that in a sec, because --

What is it about the dumb, persistent myth that warm or hot water put out in the weather freezes faster than cold water? I heard this again the other day from someone and I was so dumbfounded that I couldn't bring myself to correct them. It defies the laws of thermodynamics, folks. If nothing else, consider that the warm water is cooled by the environment down to a temperature that qualifies as cold water, right? And that this takes time? And then, presumably, this now same-as-the-initial-cold-temperature water will take, what, less time to freeze employing what mechanism? I believe this fallacy must have come from some high school physics course in which the instructor explained calories and heating water and how much energy it takes to heat frozen water as opposed to liquid water. I'm not entirely sure but I suspect that someone took that data and extrapolated it incorrectly. The other thing that might be going on is that it's true that warm or hot water evaporates more quickly. Less water, less time to cool it down. However, I doubt that the evaporation rate reduces the amount of water overall (unless, possibly, you have a really small container) enough to increase the freezing rate.

Rant mode off.

My next project, after I'm done with the YA I'm working on, will be House of Goats. I proposed this at Kris and Dean's master's class and I've had very kind reminders ever since then that I have to write this book. Although I'm not basing House of Goats on my life, you can bet that all my Skunky stories will be included. And of course there will be dogs, and cats, and rodent infestations ... all the gory details of life on a small farm when you don't know exactly what you're doing and learn everything the hard way.

Well, not everything. Learning to make homemade blackberry pies wasn't hard at all. But then pie is notoriously easy.

The puppies have been enjoying life inside the house. They spend a few hours outside every day during the warmest part of the day, which they use for chasing each other around the yard and lazing in the sun, but the remainder of the time they're indoors napping in our living room chairs. The vacuum is my friend. Despite the added work, and the additional fuzzy people always getting in my way and underfoot, it's wonderful having them in the house with us. Aside from occasional forays into the litter box, they're really well-behaved animals.

No more sleeping on the bed, though. They take up more than half of a king-sized futon. The wedgie allotted to me when they're there is warm, but a little too cramped for comfort.

Brian is Home!!

Yes, our wayward wandering dog has come home. For those of you who've read Benji, this'll sound familiar:

Apparently Brian spent several hours hanging out with dogs downhill from us. There were two puppies and the owners noticed that he wasn't hounding the chickens, so they didn't mind and figured he'd go home when he was good and ready. They called him Bear.

Brian didn't go home, but wandered for a couple more days, going further north and west. He ended up wandering back south again toward the road, where he came upon Windy Ridge, where Mary found him. Mary had given me, the kids, and our groceries a ride home when our car broke down one day, so she knew us but didn't connect Brian to our home.

They loved Brian. Her boys became very attached and named him Wesley. They didn't see any signs and didn't have time to go door to door (it would be an enormous task anyway! I don't expect that sort of thing) but they did call two separate humane society branches. For some reason the humane societies didn't connect the dots, possibly because she described him as a Newfoundland (black dog) retriever mix and perhaps the person on the phone didn't hear 'white' in the description.

Mary has a ton of wonderful animals, including horses and llamas, and is in touch with our animal hospital. So the next time she went there she checked the boards and realized she had Brian. She called immediately.

The boys were crushed, but we're elated. The DH and I put together a huge gift basket and brought it over as a big thank you. And we all lived happily ever after.

Beast and Finn were a little puzzled when Brian came home, btw. He smelled completely different, so they followed him around and checked him out to make sure he wasn't some weird dog that happens to smell a little like Brian. For his part, Brian is happy to be in his old dog house again, and slept in it all night. I think he's a little confused, but not about us. He was so happy to see me, he ran right into my arms.

Physically he lost some weight, which will turn out to be actually good for him. He was turning into sausage dog and it was hard on his hips. I'll try to exercise him more so that he keeps that weight off. He's in excellent shape now. Rapid weight loss (which he no doubt experienced while he was wandering around for about four days with no food) is *not* recommended, btw. Do not fast an overweight dog. We'll be keeping a close watch for any health problems, but since he's been fed for 2 1/2 weeks and seems active and happy, I'd say that any danger he might have been in has long passed.

Thank you everyone for your ongoing support. We're very happy campers. A big hurray and thank you to Mary and her boys. You guys are heroes.