How to Teach Your Pet to Love Grooming
As professional groomers, we understand how important frequent and thorough grooming is for pets.
Brushing helps prevent matting and removes dead hair, trimming their nails can help prevent discomfort, and brushing of the teeth is super important for their dental health.
Despite all the benefits grooming brings to our pets, they sure do like to make the process as difficult as possible sometimes!
However, your grooming sessions don’t always have to end in a chase around the house! There are some small and easy things you can do help familiarise your pet with every facet of the grooming routine so that they can be much calmer and maybe even begin to enjoy it!
Teaching Your Pet to Accept Handling
All grooming requires you keep your pet still. However, being held down can be the frightening part for some cats and dogs!
Therefore, getting your pets familiar with being held down and moved about is the first step for a pain-free grooming experience.
To do this, taking things slow and offering rewards are key.
Firstly, just get them used to being held still. Speak in a soothing voice and offer rewards. Slowly increase the length of time you do this over a few days until they are completely comfortable.
From there, slowly get them used to having different areas of the body handled; lifting up their tail, revealing the nails in their paw, holding their face still. Offer rewards as always and talk in a soothing voice.
Teaching your pet to accept handling without a fuss will make all grooming easier!
Teaching Your Pet About Your Grooming Tools
Another part of the grooming routine that may scare your pets are the tools themselves.
It may seem silly that your cat or dog is scared of a brush, but you have to understand that the act of brushing is a strange sensation they aren’t used to.
To get your pet used to a brush, let them at first sniff and interact with it. Show them that it isn’t a threat, it’s simply something they will learn to enjoy in the future!
Clippers can tend to be extra scary due to the sound they make. Therefore, you can add in an extra step of “air-clipping”; making the clipping sound near your pet so they can become used to the noise.
Like before, do this over a period of several days and offer plenty of treats!
Teaching Your Pet About the Grooming Process
Now that your pet is used to both being handled and the grooming tools themselves, it’s time to get them used to the actual sensation of grooming.
Whether you are brushing their teeth, trimming their nails, or brushing their coat, it all comes down to the same process!
At first, just try touching the pet with the tool. For example, try resting the toothbrush on their teeth or applying a slight amount of pressure on the nail with a clipper.
Reward this with treats!
Once they are comfortable, you can move on to actually brushing or trimming. However, it’s recommended you keep things to short bursts for now until your pet becomes more comfortable.
Your pet will learn that this is nothing to be afraid of, and may even begin to enjoy it!
The Results of Your Hard Work!
After all that, you should have a much easier time grooming your pets!
Not only that, but helping your pets become used to this process helps our own professional groomers work faster and get your pets looking amazing even quicker.
Keeping on top of your pets grooming requirements every week can be very time-consuming, so why not let our trained groomers take care of it within your own home?
