Show Grooming a Kooiker THE NEDERLANDSE KOOIKERHONDJE IS A DOG Natural
BY HAILEY PERKINS AND AMBER CORDUAN
Hailey
Amber
B efore jumping into the Nederlandse Kooikerhondje grooming world, we should mention our background in grooming. Amber Corduan has been a professional pet groomer for 14 years, focusing on specific trimming such as feet, feathering, etc. Hailey Perkins has been a pro- fessional pet groomer for 11 years, since she was 15 years old, focusing more on complete body grooming, patterns, faces, etc. This experience greatly helps us understand the right tools for the job, how different coat types work, and what a natural, untrimmed coat means. Amber has been showing in AKC for over 15 years now and understands what the judges look for, how to properly groom a show coat, and more! In learning that we are professional groomers, we want to mention that we our- selves would never take our Kooiker to another groomer. You would never want to risk cutting off the earrings, trimming of the feathering, or “neatening” of any- thing. We would suggest, if taking your Kooiker to a groomer, that you tell them absolutely no trimming is to be done! You may find a groomer who understands showing dogs, but we would avoid groomers unless absolutely needed. You may have noticed that some breeds have become what we would call “over- groomed” in the show ring. We do NOT want our Kooikers to become like them, and in order to keep this from happening, we have to stick to our standard and groom them appropriately. We do not want to see a “fluffed-up” coat, water being sprayed on the coat before the ring, chalking or starch used, or any “marking” or changing of the coat. What follows is our process for grooming our Kooiker before a show. First, we bathe him the day before we leave. We wash his face and head (usually using blue- berry facial shampoo or puppy tearless), then we completely rinse and towel dry the head (this keeps the dog from shaking so much). Then we wash his body using gentle, professional shampoos. Some of the products we use are Fresh N Clean, Tropiclean, Earthbath, and Nzymes. After applying shampoo, we apply condi- tioner and we fully rinse the dog. We towel dry his entire body and get ready to use a high velocity dryer. This is where the process may differ depending on your dog. High velocity dryers work in a few different ways. On double-coated dogs, like German Shepherds, we use them against the grain of the coat, so backwards, up the back. This loosens any matting, and it blows out dead skin and dead coat. It pulls the coat from the skin so that the dead coat can be brushed out. For dogs like Afghan Hounds, Springer Spaniels, and Kooikers, we use the dryer with the grain of the coat to flatten the top of the coat, giving it a beautiful sheen. This method still blows out dead skin and dead coat, so we do believe this is an important part of the process. Even short-coated dogs benefit from high velocity dryers! Contrary to
214 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, AUGUST 2021
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