How To Find A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel

I've learned near safe and correct dog-grooming methods and like to share tips for other King Charles Spaniel parents.

My King Charles Spaniel, Dylan.

Why I Groom My King Charles Spaniel Myself

I recently took a domestic dog-preparation form and am really glad I did. I ordinarily send our domestic dog, Dylan, to the groomers, but I decided to have a go myself. It is quite prissy to spend the time with your dog and we both seem to enjoy it, although it does accept quite a long time to complete.

The benefits of grooming your dog are:

• Your domestic dog will be clean, and a clean animal around the house is a proficient thing.
• Your dog will feel amend. Grooming removes dead hair, knots, and tangles.
• Your dog will look shiny and healthy!
• If y'all do the grooming yourself, you lot can give him or her a chip of a health check.
• You and your dog volition build a good relationship and agreement.

What Y'all Volition Demand

• Slicker castor: For getting out knots and tangles.
• Nail clippers: Get skilful quality ones that cut cleanly.
• Rummage
• Animal clippers: Choose ones which let yous change the blade.
• Blades: For my King Charles Spaniel, I use 7F and ten.
• Scissors: Use thinning and bull-nose scissors.
• Towel
• Pet shampoo
• Hair dryer: You can get pet dryers which have a small stand, which can be useful.
• Bath mat: This is useful to cease your domestic dog from slipping in the bath. As well, if you lot are clipping them on a table, stick the mat to the tabular array. This helps to keep your dog from slipping.

Grooming Equipment

Getting Started

Here is how yous should start grooming your dog.

Put Your Dog on a Secure Surface

The all-time way to lift a dog up onto a table is to continue your own dorsum directly, bend at the knees and lift. Clasping your hands together, wrap your arms effectually your dog's cervix under the chin and under the base of the tail, with all four legs between your artillery and lose.

Remove the Knots

Showtime by brushing out any tangles or knots. Apply thinning pair of scissors if you demand to cut out any knots. Your dog'southward coat must be knot- and tangle-gratuitous earlier bathing. It will make clipping and trimming easier.

Make clean the Ears

Clean your dog's ears. Use either cotton wool wool moist with warm water or pet ear cleaning wipes. Gently rub inside the ears. Take intendance not to push too far in. Wipe away any wax. Use a dissimilar wipe or cotton for each ear. Thornit powder is helpful if your canis familiaris gets ear mites. Employ this powder during training tin can help reduce infections.

Bathe Them

Bathe your dog. Stand him on a bathroom mat so that they exercise not slip and hurt themselves. Use your shower hose to wet him, starting at the back and finishing on the head. Then lather him upwards with pet shampoo. Use enough and so that the canis familiaris is nice a lathered, once again finishing with the caput and ears.

Protect the Ears

Be careful not to get any shampoo or water within the ears as this can cause problems for them! Hold your finger or thumb over their ear hole and then that no soap or shampoo goes inside. Rinse thoroughly, making sure to get out all of the shampoo so not to irritate the skin.

Dry Them

Dry with a towel. Y'all can get a pet towel which is lint gratis and a scrap like a chamois leather. It stays damp at all times and is highly absorbent. After you lot dry your dog, band information technology out and rub over again. They are so much better than a normal towel that just gets wet. They are non very expensive. A normal towel tin be used also.

Consider a Pilus Dryer

Dry with a hair dryer. You can use your own or a pet drier. Pet driers come with a stand up so that you tin take both easily gratuitous for your dog. While drying your dog, be aware that the hair drier can get hot. Just stay for near 10 seconds in one place, combing downwards all the time. The ears will accept the longest to dry. I tend to start with the ears and so movement to the body, coming back to the ears periodically, then that Dylan does not go bored. The ears is the one identify he doesn't similar me doing very much. Drying takes an age!

Curl to Proceed

Read More From Pethelpful

Clip the Nails

Prune nails if needed. Waiting until later the bath will hateful that the nails are warm and soft and a little easier to cut. When trimming the nails, be careful not to go also far back and cut the quick. This volition make your canis familiaris drain. Clip very pocket-size pieces at a time at a 45-caste angle. If y'all do nip the quick, apply pressure level with a bit of cotton fiber wool until the bleeding has stopped. Don't forget the nail that is upwards their leg a little, as this one does tend to go long as it does not go whatsoever wear.

Clipping the Fur

Follow the bluish arrows to clip down and in the direction of the fur at all times.

The first fourth dimension yous clip your dog'southward fur volition be a bit scary. Once your dog is used to the clippers, they volition be okay. Even now and then, I turn the clippers on and let Dylan see them so he knows what is going on. I used ten bract nether his ears and 7F on his body, head, and outer ears.

Tips for Safe and Successful Dog Preparation

• Be careful with the chest area. The skin here can be loose. Clip downward all the manner between the front end legs. E'er clipper to the lay of the fur, never upward.
• See the diagram above to see directions to clip. Clip downwardly at all times, halfway down the body and halfway downwards the tail. Clipping King Charles Spaniels keeps them absurd in the summer and in that location are less hairs over the house!
• Clip every bit much or as little as you wish, simply first off with a petty as in one case washed, you can't stick information technology back!
• Check that that blades are not getting too hot, as they can burn the skin.
• Use the balderdash-nosed scissors nether the foot area. Curve the foot under so that you lot tin become underneath and cut the fur which grows in between the pads. Cutting the pilus on the feet with scissors, keeping the human foot to the table and one half of the scissors on the table. Cut around the human foot. Employ the thinning scissors on the tops of the anxiety to sparse out the hair.
• Employ pair of scissors to cut the dorsum area under the tail and back legs. Bring your domestic dog to the edge of the table and cut the dorsum of the legs up.
• Cut any straggly bits nether the belly with pair of scissors.
• Cut ears to desired length. You lot may desire to leave them long or cut them a bit shorter. I cut Dylan's ears a bit shorter to go on them out of his food. Hold the cease of the fleshy part of the ear so non to cut it and and so trim hair to the length you similar. Just make sure to keep both ears the same length. That is the play a joke on here! Y'all don't want a lop-sided canis familiaris going on his walks.
• Then utilise the thinning scissors, cutting iii-4 times upwards and then combing out. Tidy any stray bits with scissors.

Clean-cut Tail

A good moving picture of the tail and how it should be cut.

The hardest chip for me is the tail. Each time I attempt to hold his tail to practise this, he sits down! What you lot are trying to achieve is a cutting that is short at the base of operations, thickens out, and tapers to short at the end, a bit like the shape of a banana.

If You Find Critters

You may find parasites on your dog'south coat. Here is how to get rid of them:

• Fleas: Fleas alive on dogs for a very brusk catamenia of fourth dimension, but tin alive in carpets and upholstery for months and their eggs can alive for years. Make sure to de-flea often to keep your own habitation flea-free. Use oral or drops on the back of the cervix that concluding about a month. In that location are as well sprays and powders for this.
• Ticks: The size of a pea, ticks tin can be difficult to remove every bit they embed their legs into the domestic dog'due south skin of the canis familiaris. Treatment is the same every bit for fleas.
• Lungworm affects a dog's lungs and can cause coughing.
• Tapeworm: Signs are scooting and anal irritation. Their eggs await similar grains of rice and can be sometimes seen around the anus or in the fur.
• Roundworm lives and feeds in the small intestine. They normally spread from mother to pup. Adult dogs ingest the eggs from other dogs.
• For all worms, at that place are worming tablets. They can exist bought from a vet or at a pet store. De-worming should be done every 3-vi months.

Don't Forget a Care for

Requite your dog a treat! They accept been good through all of the bathing, clipping, and cutting.

This content is accurate and true to the best of the author's knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

Questions & Answers

Question: Take you got a video of you clipping your dog Dylan? I would love to see it.

Answer: Sorry no, I don't accept a video, but information technology is something I might do in the hereafter. Cheers for the thought.

© 2013 Lavender Jade

Amber on December 06, 2016:

Hello, very nice commodity, ane affair though, how did y'all cutting his face? Can y'all use a blade on his face and if so what bract size? Please reply,

Thank y'all :)

Dani on December 01, 2016:

Groovy article! Thank you then much. My boy is 13, deaf and getting a little blurry in the eyesight section. As you said, the feet pilus grows similar crazy. He'southward slip-slidin' away on my wooden floors and so I want to have a go myself. 1 things you didn't mention was how to go him to let me practise it! He's had a traumatic start 6 years and is very tentative and quite anxious. He tolerates being touched beneath the neck and hates the feet. I don't want to necktie him down with viscous-tape to do information technology :) Whatever hints? Requite him a treat to chew on while I do it? I guess I should try it myself. Cheers again.

Kathy on September 20, 2016:

Hello! Wonderful article; thank yous! I adopted an 18 mo one-time male Blenheim, and wasn't happy when I picked him upward and his beautiful coat had been trimmed to a puppy cut! His photos had a gorgeous, shine coat. Anyhow, it's growing in well, though the fur on his hind quarters is short and a chip unruly. He's my picayune dear, then no thing. :)

My question is about facial hair. I had a female person prior, so don't know if this is only with males, but at present that Charlie is nearly ii, he's getting quite a hefty set of (what I call) sideburns. They're growing straight out of his cheeks, and are thick and tend to stick out towards his ears. Is this normal fur for a male person? And I presume if I want to keep his coat to breed standard, I shouldn't trim them? I can't notice any photos of this on other Cavis. He is neutered (at xviii mos) and the sideburns began to come in at about 20 mos.

Thanks so much!

Kathy

California, U.South.

Jo Franklin on September 05, 2016:

Hi - great advice, really helpful. Cheers.

My Cavalier blackness and tan male child puppy is 7 months sometime (neutered) his coat is and so thick. I used to have a tri coloured cav and kept her clipped to short coat - which was corking for her (and united states). These are loved pets - non evidence dogs! I desire to trim the puppy, had a domestic dog groomer visit and he refused to do more legs saying his adult glaze wasn't fully through so he couldn't do as it would ruin his futurity glaze......? He did trim his legs; poor footling chap looks ridiculous! I'g going therefore clip him myself. Do you call back in that location is whatever good reason, as a pure pet, that I shouldn't exercise this until he's 15 months quondam (as the groomer suggested) ? Any communication gratefully received. Thanks.

Jo

Claire Toll on May 02, 2016:

Swell info, tin I ask where you purchase the equipment I'thousand looking at groomers, and Amazon at moment. Also I would like to continue abdomen and legs short do you recommend clipping or scissors?

Lavender Jade (author) from Derbyshire on April xxx, 2016:

Hello Sad my emails have been downwards so I did non become this.

Information technology does take ages the kickoff fourth dimension, but you volition become quicker, although, I besides take two, Dylan and Bobby...Bob Dylan! if I am giving them the whole cut and not just a wash and trim, I exercise one, i day and the other the next, although, they like having a bath and cut, and I hold, they love the closeness, Dylan, the older 1, now disappears when the cut table and box go brought out!!

I am really glad you have had a go twenty

Trudy on March 19, 2016:

Thank you!! I have two CKCS Nellie & Charlie, the start time I attempted to cut them information technology took me 3.5 hours each!!!

This is a swell guide, which has given me the confidence to have another go every bit I idea my Charlie would fight me all the fashion, just he loved beingness close to me and subsequently kept jumping upwardly the table and barking as he wanted to go back upward - it was so sweet!! I felt and so proud to be able to await after my own fur-babies. Thank you for this guide ten

Lavander Jade (writer) from Derbyshire on July 27, 2013:

Hi Thelma, thanks for your annotate. Cavalier King Charles Spaniels are the nigh lovely dogs aren't they. I know what y'all mean about the nail cutting, the first time I did it I was very hesitant and still don't like doing it now, their nails are so black that you can't tell. I take gone a bit too close one time and fabricated him bleed. I felt awful for ages..

Thelma Alberts from Germany on July 26, 2013:

This is a very useful and informative hub. I accept also a Condescending Rex Charles Spaniel pet whose name is Angus. When it comes to smash cut, I brought him to the vet as I´m afraid to might hurt him. Thanks for sharing this. Have a lovely weekend!

Hayley LaGarce from Kansas Metropolis, MO on June 09, 2013:

You're right this does seem fourth dimension consuming! Merely if you take the fourth dimension this is an excellent guide.

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