Grooming Tools: Furminator

I figured I'd write about my experience with the Furminator since I lack anything else interesting to write about that is dog related.
The Furminator is a type of undercoat rake.  It's actually a shaving blade attached to a handle believe it or not. The blade is the exact same as one that you'd use on a clipper to shave a dog's (or human's) fur off with.  I guess someone discovered that it could be used to get out that nasty undercoat quite easily.

While I don't own the "Furminator" brand Furminator, I've got a knock-off made by Bamboo called the Furbuster.  It cost me $20 and has an easily replaceable blade unlike the Furminator which needs to be completely replaced if something happens to the blade.  And things do happen, I've seen one that was dropped and the blade was bent out of shape.

This is my Furbuster.  It's blue, but comes in red, purple or green and maybe yellow but I'm not exactly sure.  It's not a sharp as the Furminator which I find is a plus and works just as well.

My weekly grooming routine during shedding season is to only use the Furminator on the weekend and the curry and slicker every or every other day.  Why don't I use the Furminator every day?  While my Shiba's undercoat continues to shed those days I'm not using the Furminator, it can actually damage the coat if you brush with it too often, which happens a LOT.

The Furminator is very sharp and can easily damage the dog's skin.  If you've got one drag it along your arm with the same pressure you use on your dog.  You won't do it again, trust me, unless you've got feathertouch.
The Furminator can also completely strip out the undercoat which is bad and can damage the overcoat.  This is caused by excessive or very hard brushing.  Dogs with Furminator-damaged coats and skin aren't very happy so please don't overuse your Furminator.

Anyways, when I use the Furminator I do one side of Conker on Saturday then the other on Sunday, or whatever parts of him that happen to be shedding at the time.  I get out about a softball-sized amount of fur (when bundled up) with each of these brushings and they only last 10 minutes.  I stop when I've brushed Conker for 10 minutes even if I can still get out large clumps of fur to avoid skin and coat damage.
Besides, whatever I miss with the Furminator I can keep under control with the curry and slicker throughout the week until the next weekend rolls around.

The Furminator is a great tool, but used incorrectly can do more harm than good.  Remember that when you brush your dog with one.  They are also very pricey so don't buy one in a pet store.  Instead go online and find one, they can be bought for $25 or less.  If you go with a knock-off brand try to find one that's gotten good reviews.  I personally prefer my Furbuster to the Furminator due to it's replaceable and not-as-sharp blade and generally cheaper price.

The Furminator should only be used on dogs with undercoats since it does nothing for overcoats, stiff-hair coats or wooly/curly/wire coats.  It will work on Lab-type coats for the soft fluffy crap that gets everywhere, but don't buy one if you've got a dog like a Whippet unless you also own a German Shepherd Dog.





Today Conker got: Turkey back with egg, turkey liver and turkey heart.  Took him 20 minutes to eat.

Fire!

So a few weeks ago little sister built a fire pit in the backyard.  It is a very nice fire pit, and last night we had a fire and made smores and all that.

I like taking pictures of fire.  It's pretty fun. Especially when you do stuff like this.

Whoop.  I don't have any idea how to make it a different color other than orange/yellow though or I'd do red and make it look cooler.


Today Conker got:

Pork meat slices with most of a chicken wing, heart and liver and beef kidney.  Yummers.

Summer is coming

Lately for the past few days it's been on the 70's.  "Nice" weather most would say, a tad chilly in my opinion, way too hot Conker says.  So Conker and I give the creek a visit before popping into the dog park.  He will go in on his own but still won't willingly go into water deeper than his chest.  Gotta keep working on that, since it's supposed to get into the 80's later this upcoming week.

I brush Conker just about every day so I'm keeping his shedding at bay, but he still has a TON of undercoat that needs to come out before the hot temperatures that I'm looking forwards to finally get here.
I also try to brush Juneau and Sasha every day but not because they need it.  They're shedding like mad right now and Conker eats the furballs they leave all over the house.  Right now I get more fur off Juneau's butt than I do Conker's whole body in one brushing.

Onwards!

Conker got beef slices with a chicken thigh and wingtip, beef organs and a chicken heart. He ate outside my room again today, this time off-leash.

"Can I have it?  Can I?  I'm sitting nicely like you always make me do so... can I eat now?"

"Seriously, this is getting old.  I'm hungry and I want to eat."    

Look at how huge his ears are.  His ears are seriously huge.

In other news...

OMG ROCK POUNCE ON THE ROCK!

And then he stuck his tongue in my mouth

Look at that sexy acne.  I'm 22 years old and still have killer acne and scars from acne.  Most people think I'm a teenager then after talking to me for a while they begin to look a bit confused and are all "wait, how old are you?"


Today Conker got:

Most of a chicken wing (which he crunched twice then swallowed hole), pork meat and beef organs.

Today Conker got:

Turkey wing piece with beef, chicken and beef liver, beef kidney and a chicken gizzard.  Vitamin E, G/C/MSM and salmon oil.
That piece of turkey wing looks like a mutant chicken leg.

 Conker always eats his meat first, in this case the beef.  He loves beef and if I mix it in with a bunch of other meat he'll pick it out before eating the other stuff.
Then he got to town on that Turkey wing piece.  Since it is a nice day I decided to feed him outside and that worked very well since Conker tends to thrash around when eating meaty bones. 

And for some reason blogger is being an ass and making this particular picture all wonky.

Anyways, I took 122 shots of Conker messing with his turkey wing piece.

I decided to only show the stupid looking ones.

I stabbed my toe with a pitch fork

Don't do that, it really hurts.  But that's not what I'm going to talk about.


I'm going to talk about photography!
My little point-and-shoot camera is still driving me insane.  So far I haven't been able to find any film that's not Fujifilm and I DO NOT like that brand.  Call me biased, but my brand of choice isn't even one you can buy in a store that's not a specialty camera store.  Since I can't afford that film and my town lacks any sort of professional camera store anyways, I'm on the hunt for a roll of Kodiak 400 but... yeah.  Small towns and defunct technology sucks.

I took all these pictures I thought were gonna be great since the preview on the point-and-shoot's screen looked good but once they got on the computer they all sucked.

Shiblur attacks the soccer blur! But the grass looks good, like it always does in action shots.

The lighting for this one was PERFECT, and that doesn't happen often for me.  Did it come out good?  No, it makes Midnight look purple, the grass behind her is all washed out and the details of her fur are a mix of too clear and not clear enough.

This was another potential that could have turned out amazing.  But the auto lighting settings screwed it up bad.  I could have selected a certain setting in manual mode but if I do that it messes with the shutter speed and that's something I can't control... So the sky is way too washed out, Midnight's fur is way too dark but the grass looks fine. Go figure.

Okay, I'll admit, this one is kinda cool despite being out of focus and totally blurred.  But the lighting wasn't bad and the anti-shake setting was on.  That auto focus though... always messes up and does stuff wrong.  It's hard to tell but it focused on the ground in this picture, not Conker even though he's right in the middle of the whole thing.

I took a whole string of photos of Conker lying in the grass here, and this is one of the better ones.  Again the auto focus and lighting things attacked and made my good pictures bad.  Most people would say this is a good shot, but if you click and look at it bigger you'll see that Conker's head is out of focus.  What is in focus?  the grass BEHIND Conker.  Yes, behind.  Not in front, behind. 
(Off topic but OMG Conker your ears are totally huge)



It even has problems focusing on stuff right in front of it with the macro setting on. 

Sorry for the rant, but I'm a semi-perfectionist and photography is one of the few fields where I am a COMPLETE perfectionist.  I was insanely obsessed with detail in my photography class, so much so that I was scaring other students and my instructor told me to tone it down a bit.  This little digital camera is going to kill me if I don't find some film soon.

Grooming Tools: Curry Comb

As most of you double-coated dog owners know, it's shedding season!  Yay!  Depending on where you live it may be almost over or just beginning.  Conker is about mid-way through his bi-annual coat blowing.  I am very good at keeping Conker's fur at bay, so I figured I'd chat a bit about the tools I use to combat the fur monster that is Shiba and keep life during shedding reasonable.

These are my tools.  From left to right: Flea comb, comb, undercoat rake, curry comb, slicker brush and Furminator knock-off.  I use the three on the right the most.
Conker gets brushed almost every day using one or more of these tools during shedding season.

Today I am going to talk about this:

The curry comb!
Curry combs are most often used on horses and aren't really too easy to find in normal pet stores.  There is a thing called the Zoom Groom that's made by Kong that is very similar to a curry comb.  The Zoom Groom has dog and cat varieties, long and short hair, but in all honesty they are all the exact same thing.  (I worked in a grooming shop and have used all these tools on all coat types.)

So! Curry comb.  I know about these since I worked on a horse ranch and would brush "my" horse with one every time I rode her.  They work very well at getting short stiff hairs loose and off whatever animal you are brushing.  In the Shiba's case, it works wonders on the shedding overcoat.  The overcoat in my opinion is more troublesome than the undercoat since there are a million products made for getting it out but hardly any for the overcoat.

Conker is a mutant and actually likes being brushed.  His favorite spots with the curry comb are his legs and belly.  And it works very good on those short leg hairs that other things like a Furminator can't seem to get.
The best part about the curry comb is that it cost me $1.49.  I was going to get a Zoom Groom but the cheapest I've been able to see them was $7.99 but I can't spend that much on a brush when I know about a cheaper alternative.  The curry is also easier to replace of your dog decides it will make a nice chew toy.

The biggest difference between the curry comb and Zoom Groom is how it works.  The curry comb has very shallow small teeth, the Zoom Groom has large deep teeth.  The curry comb works good on short flat coats and grips the fur on top, the Zoom Groom works good on thicker coats that it can get down into.  They both get the over and undercoats out but the Zoom Groom gets more undercoat than the curry.
A good feature of both of these is that they can be used while the dog it wet or damp.

When it comes down to the bottom line:
Curry comb works better on short hair, VERY good at getting overcoat off, CHEAP!
Zoom Groom works better on long hair, gets both over and undercoat off, not a bad price.

So if you've got a chill Shiba, are on a budget or have a dog with a short coat or similar to a Lab's, get the curry.  If you've got a maniac Shiba who won't sit still for long brushings or have dogs with Husky-type coats, get a Zoom Groom.





Today Conker got: Pork with beef kidney, beef and chicken liver, chicken heart, half a chicken back, G/C/MSM and salmon oil.

June 5th

Today Conker got:

Chicken!  With beef organs, a chicken heart, half a turkey gizzard, part of a turkey back, his G/C/MSM and salmon oil and a bit of spilled probiotic powder. (I was messing with one of the capsules)

Yesterday the Girls got:

Fish flavor!  It smells very strongly of fish and the Girls gobbled it up right away.  We'll know in a little less than a month how well they continue to like it and do on it.  They first got the High Prairie formula and since there are four to choose from for dogs, I went with the Pacific Stream next.
Fishy fishy fishy.

Looks exactly like the buffalo kind though.  Just smells different.

PB and S

Today Conker got beef with all the usuals.


I've recently found out that Conker goes nuts for peanut butter and even more nuts for peanut butter and sardines.  Sounds delish, doesn't it?

This is a tutorial/recipe on how to make a Peanut Butter and Sardine Kong filling. 

Items needed:
Kong
Small mixing dish
Butter knife
Peanut butter
Can of sardines (in water, no salt)


Open the sardines and take out roughly half a sardine.  Put the sardine into the small mixing dish.  You can put the rest in a bag and freeze for later, feed to your dog or cat or eat them yourself.

Open your peanut butter and get about a whole sardine's worth for roughly 1 part sardine, 2 parts peanut butter. You can mess with the ratio to your dog's taste.

Put the peanut butter in the bowl with the sardine.
Use the knife and mix the peanut butter and sardine together.  It will look something like this:

Yum.  Now stuff it into your Kong and freeze for a couple hours if you want it to last longer than five seconds. 

Give the PB and S filled Kong to your dog after adequate freezing or straight up.

Listen to the obnoxious licking sound as your dog enjoys his or her new snack.


This recipe will fill a small (I believe) Kong, so adjust for larger ones if that's what you've got.

June 3rd

Today Conker got pork meat with a chicken heart, half a turkey gizzard, beef liver and kidney and part of a turkey back.  And a small bit of chicken meat.


On our way to the dogpark we found this:

A Northwestern Garter Snake.  It was MAD and tried to bite me as I attempted to catch it and put it off the sidewalk.  Conker was interested in the snake and I kept telling him to leave it while I chased it off the sidewalk and into the brush.  Once in the brush it tried to bite me about five more times.  Since I didn't know what kind of snake it was at that moment, I stayed out of it's range and wasn't able to get a better picture.  I figured it was some sort of Garter but I tend to be a bit more cautious with snakes that I'm unfamiliar with.  I'll still try to catch it though.
Anyways, it was neat to see the angry little snake, and Conker got to see one for the first time and hopefully next time he won't be so interested since I was very adamant that he left it alone.