Dog hair everywhere...

[jillc]

Help! We adopted a wonderful yellow lab mix in September & we love him to pieces, but...

there is dog hair everywhere now! Our families have always had dogs in the past, but we for whatever reason haven't had such a problem with hair.

I'm vacuuming all the time & lint rolling our plum colored couches, but there is yellow dog hair all over our clothes, tile floors, carpet, couches, etc., etc.

Do I just need a better vacuum?

[almostamom]

We also have a yellow lab. The smartest thing we ever did (although it was completely by accident) was have carpet the same color as our dog! I do vacuum every day (DS is still crawling and I can't stand for him to have dog hair on him). I have noticed a difference since we got our Dyson earlier this year, but I still have to vacuum daily. On the positive side of a lab, he's so lovable and loving and he's amazingly wonderful with DS! :)

~Linda~
DS 11/9/04

[Momof3Labs]

That's a lab for you! We also try to match our floors/furniture to our pets, which didn't work too well when we had a chocolate Lab and a Golden retriever. Now we have two chocolate Labs, so it is easier.

Brushing the dog regularly and bathing them frequently helps with the hair loss. So does having them on a high quality food - though sometimes new adoptees shed more at the beginning as they blow out a poor quality coat.

And keep the dog off the furniture, too! Even putting a dog bed away from the dark couch may help - he'll lay there rather than on the floor next to the couch.

[wendmatt]

We have a black lab and the hair is everywhere, even vacuuming every day. I mean EVERYWHERE! She's such a wonderful dog, you just vacuum alot and get used to it. SOrry I'm no help. Oh yes, like Lori said, daily brushing helps.

[muskiesusan]

We have a chocolate lab and a golden retriever. We are swimming in hair right now, but DS1 is terrified of the vacuum, so I can't do that as regularly as I want. Like PPs, we match the furniture to the dog. IMO, the lab sheds worse and gets/sticks to everything, so all my furniture is dark. The dark couch also helps when they decide to lean up against it while sleeping which results in dirt being rubbed onto the fabric.

At least the golden's hair has the courtesy to ball up in corners. That makes it easy to swoop up when company is coming over! The lab's hair seems to float in individual strands wating to land on my stove.


Susan
Mom to Nick 10/01
& Alex 04/04

[chiqanita]

Yikes! I totally understand where you're coming from, we have an orange sable toy Pomeranian.

We limit his access to the family room and the kitchen. Also, we recently started trimming his hair down a little. He also loves to roll all around on the lawn which helps in getting rid of the loose hair.

However, he does shed, still. I don't know why I didn't consider one of those Cockapoo (Cocker Spaniel/Poodle mix) I hear they don't shed. Don't know for certain.

[Radosti]

We ended up keeping our foster Shiba Inu and I've never seen a dog shed so much!!! She came in with a left-over bag of Pedigree and I immediately switched her to the same food our other dogs eat - it's called Solid Gold Hund-N-Flocken. It's an organic diet. Within 3 months of putting her on the new food, the shedding was reduced tremendously. It also really helped to groom her with the Furminator grooming tool. QVC sells it. In the beginning, we were getting a lot of hair out of her with the Furminator, but as the good diet kicked in, we found that we need it less and less.

A lot of people don't realize how much the diet has to do with the dog's coat, but it really does. Our other two dogs are short haired, so we've never had that constant attack of the fur-dust-bunnies. Thankfully, now it's just twice a year when the Shiba will blow her coat in the spring and fall. And even then, all we have to do is brush her with the Furminator and she's done.

Here is the link to the food we feed:
http://www.petfooddirect.com/store/product_detail.asp?pf%5Fid=2017726&dept%5Fid=1&brand%5Fid=73&Page=&mscssid=BB5KD3X00UMS9MWDTBV087NMRC9N2W9D
It's more expensive, but it's much more digestible, so the dogs eat much less of it. So, it all evens out.

[HannaAddict]

You must have adopted our girl's twin! We have a yellow lab mix and she is the furriest thing ever. Despite brushing and brushing, she sheds far more than our senior citizen collie who had a huge, gorgeous coat and more than our other mixed breed adoptee, an australian shepher/keeshound?chow? mix. We are resigned to it and the lab fur on the hardwood floors and carpets. It is also amazing how fast a vacuum bag fills up too.

Kimberly

[niccig]

I've never heard of the furminator. It may be what I need to do for our dogs. Do you use the shampoo as well or just the grooming tool?

Thanks,
Nicci

[kozachka]

We have the same problem with our lab. Ours is yellow and his hair is not too noticeable on the light brown couch/wooden floors (which we planned when picking what colour lab to get) but dark clothing is a different story. To be fair, we don't brush him daily, but even when we did (pre-DS), he still shedded a lot. Maybe I need to try one of those Furminator grooming tools. Right now we use a shedding blade similar to this one from Drs. Foster and Smith catalog http://www.minurl.com/8Xlj0w and our lab learned to like it. When I groom our dog with it, I can easily collect a grocery plastic bag full of hair. Somedays I am jealous of my friends' hair (as opposed to fur) dogs, they don't shed but have to have their hair trimmed monthly.

[Radosti]

Nope, just the grooming tool. The food helps tremendously though, so you should try that as well.