“Anyone want some dog fur?” I asked my Facebook friends, “ I've got enough to stuff a pillow with! Bentley is shedding his winter coat all over my house.” Now, I intended this to be funny, but several of my friends took it seriously—not my offer, but the concept. Apparently this is something that people have actually done historically. “Our ancestors used everything they had -- and then some,” commented one of my music teacher colleagues. “My sister spun yarn that included dog hair from my nephew's dog in it,” my old college roommate posted. A quick Google search online showed me that indeed even today people are making sweaters from dog fur, as well as scarves, hats, mittens and purses. “Dog fur can be 80% warmer than wool”, one such website claimed. Who knew?
Not being a crafty person, the dog fur was not a benefit to me at all, but only a major housekeeping headache. I teach piano lessons in my home, and every day I need to tidy my house (at least in a cursory way) before my students arrive. I was sweeping up HUGE piles of dog fur. Probably enough to stuff a gallon baggie every day. Every day as I swept, Bentley stood over the pile of fur, right in my way. He seemed proprietary about his hair, not wanting me to push it into the dustpan and discard it in the trash. As I tossed it wastefully away I thought, “Surely at least it's biodegradable.”
I worried about Bentley's shedding. I have lived with dogs my whole life, but I've never had one shed this much. It started near his hind quarters. I could see the fur that was coming loose, grasp it and pull it out easily. What if Bentley had some weird disease?
I stopped in the natural pet supply store that is in my neighborhood, and checked with Lisa, the store owner, who is very knowledgeable about all things dog. “He's 'blowing his coat',” she told me. She explained that certain dogs shed their seasonal coats at spring time and in the fall in a major way. She said not to worry, unless I started to see bald spots.
I went home and perused the web. On one site, there was a picture of a large, black Newfoundland lying on the floor. Beside him, was a pile of thick, black fur that had been shaped into a dog almost as big as he was. On this entertaining web site, a family described their battle with the dog fur—how it burned in their candle wax, broke their vacuum cleaner, and how they even found a frozen artifact in an ice cube. According to the American Kennel club, it's a common misconception to think that long haired dogs shed more than short haired dogs. Poodles, who have quite a bit of hair, hardly shed at all. The determining factor is not the length of the hair, but the fact that the fur is “double coated” and has an undercoat meant to be discarded at the ends of winter and summer. Bentley is soft and furry, but certainly not as long-haired as a Collie or Golden Retriever. His face looks like a Beagle, his body is dotted and freckled with copper like a Blue Tick Hound, and I now know his fur is double coated like a Newfoundland.
Lisa had recommended a special dog brush called the “furminator.” She assured me that if I used it once a week, I would never obsessively sweep dog hair from my floor again. Only problem was the “furminator” cost around fifty dollars. “Fifty dollars for a dog brush??? You've got to be kidding!” I exclaimed. But the “furminator” is apparently no ordinary dog brush. She showed me that it has a special razor that gets under the outer layer, to the layer of fur underneath that is shedding. It made sense to me on a certain level, but being the self-employed/under-employed person that I am, a fifty dollar dog brush was not in my budget. Now, I know that for some folks dropping fifty bucks is like dropping quarters into a parking meter—but not for me.
I continued to just let Bentley lose his fur the old-fashioned way. I should probably have at least invested in a cheap dog brush at Wal-Mart, but I hate going there so much that I kept putting it off. In the meantime, I designated one of my old hair brushes as a dog brush. It did the trick. I tried to brush off as much fur as possible once or twice a day to save the trouble of sweeping it from all corners of the house and gathering it up. I also got in the habit of plucking off loose fur as we went on our daily walk through the park. I would look at his hindquarters and his tail, and regularly groom him by hand. As I gently pulled off the soft tufts, an image came to mind of chimps picking fleas off each other at the zoo. I've always thought it was very sweet how they do that.
As the weeks wore on, I was tempted to buy the “furminator”. Several of my friends who saw my problem gave me their opinions that I was being cheap. “I would do it,” they told me. Yet I stubbornly believed that eventually, if I let nature take its course, I could save myself fifty bucks.
After several weeks of continued hair loss, Bentley started to look like he had a Mohawk. His hair was thinning up the sides, but still had a thick ridge on the top of his back. Could this really be normal?
It was reassuring to me one day to see another woman brushing her dog at the park, presumably so she wouldn't have to deal with the fur in her house. She sat on a bench with her Golden Retriever and stroked and stroked. I could see the hair drifting and accumulating beside the bench. “Good, I'm not the only one,” I thought. But what happens to those balls and tufts of fur released at the park? Were we littering? Or would it just magically fly away somewhere? Or become invisible? I did feel slightly guilty. Sort of like when Bentley poops accidentally in someone's yard.
On the first morning of spring, Bentley and I walked hand in leash through the park. As we followed the trail past the bench, I saw what looked like a large number of cobwebs-- glistening with dew-- in the grass. But when I got closer, I saw it was actually dog fur. It was no longer fluffy and puffy. The wet dog hair looked like bejeweled gossamer threads clinging to the shiny, wet grass in the early morning sun.
Later that afternoon, I sat out on my back deck enjoying heavenly sunshine and warmest temperatures yet-- in the 70's. I was brushing Bentley with one hand, and talking to my mother on the phone in the other. As I gathered large fluffy balls of fur from the brush and let them fly in the warm spring breeze, my mother told me about the late season winter storm in Kansas-- five inches of snow and frigid temperatures. She spoke of snow still falling, as I watched the dog fur roll gently across my deck.
Every day, more and more fur has come off. It's been a fascinating process to watch the parts of the coat that are loosening work their way up from Bentley's hindquarters, to his back, and now up near his neck. The fluffier, softer hair has mostly been shed, and Bentley is now working on the more wiry hair that coats his upper back. There is less fur to sweep up now—probably more like a quart-sized baggie instead of a gallon size. When my teenage son, Noah, came home after staying at his dad's house for a few days, he remarked, “He looks like a dog again.” The weird Mohawk and most of the loosening tufts are gone, and Bentley's coat is now more uniform, albeit thinner. Could we be almost finished? Well, maybe for now...
I fully expect that he will “blow his coat” again in the fall, so I have that to look forward to. Maybe by then I'll be able to mentally prepare myself to invest in the “furminator.” In the meantime, I can make it my science project to visit the park every day and try to discover what happens to the drifting, discarded fur.
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