Unless you started your grooming career with long haired show dogs, you probably use a slicker brush as your go-to brush. I’ve heard groomers scoff at pinbrushes saying they didn’t do anything but smooth the hair. Used incorrectly that may be true but in practiced hands it can be as useful a tool as any in your tool kit. And there’s one important thing that it tends NOT to do – break and damage coat.
The outside layer of a hair has overlapping scales like fish scales or shingles. Dog hair tangles when another hair is trapped partially under a scale. Proximity and static electricity cause other hairs to join the jam-up, creating a mat or matted area. While the short, bent pins on a slicker are great for separating those hairs, they also scrape and break the cuticle (surface) of the hair, making more places for hair to get stuck and tangle. The same goes for most dematting tools as they are damaging hair as well as causing different lengths of coat.
The pin brush is used pretty much just like a slicker. Start at the outside or bottom of the coat and line brush (also called layer brush) bit by bit down to the skin. Repeat for the next section until the whole dog is done. If you add a good brushing spray like GloCoat or UltraMax to the pin brushing you will find in most cases that if the coat is not already heavily damaged from dematting the end result is a completely comb through coat that is less likely to mat back up.
Customers often request – or demand – that their dog be brushed out. They don’t understand 1. How inhumane and 2. How useless that brushing can be, and it’s our job to educate them and perhaps sell them a brush and comb along with providing instructions on how to use them.
A slickerBrush in a customer’s hands can ruin coat as well as potentially brush burning the dog. A pin brush can be safer and may help them maintain the dog correctly - and you might find you like them as well.
