Why Does Your Dog Shed?

When you wake up in the morning, you may notice the occasional hair on your pillow. You’re not shedding, however; you’re just losing the occasional hair! Dogs, however, shed quite a bit, and for pretty good reasons. Yes, you both lose hair, but your dog actually needs to shed for their health. First of all, your dog doesn’t just shed hair; just like you, your dog also sheds skin.

Most dogs are what’s called “very light shedders,” dogs who rarely need to be clipped, stripped or scissored, but do occasionally require this kind of treatment for not only aesthetic but health reasons. (After all, dirt and other undesirable substances can gather in hair.) These dogs have hair that falls out at a slower rate than other breeds, so they require grooming lest their hair begin to mat.

It is rather common for dogs to shed in a season or cyclical manner. Shedding will often begin in spring as their winter coat is lost; this makes sense, as winter coats are needed to get by in the cold weather (dogs are, after all, basically naked). If your dog is an indoor dog, however, then its body may not note that the season is changing, and he may end up just shedding all-year-round. This is not exactly ideal, but it’s hard to fix; some dogs simply aren’t made to live outdoors, so exposing them to the outdoors a lot won’t really make any difference; it’s just how they’ve been bred. Also keep in mind that just because your dog has long hair doesn’t mean that they shed any more than they normally do; it’s just that when they do shed, there’s a lot more of the hair that’s there!

The best way to reduce the amount of shedding that your dog or dogs are doing is to try and keep up on their grooming. Yes, they’re going to shed; that’s just natural. But you can keep that shedding from being overwhelming clumps of hair by regularly grooming your dog and making sure that the hair that does fall from your dog is short and manageable, rather than long and in huge balls. With just a little bit of attention, shedding can be not much of a thing at all!