When you think about grooming your pet, do you think about style, fancy haircuts, and perfumed shampoos? Do you only think about having your pet groomed when they are dirty or have an undesirable smell? Well grooming your pet is more than personal hygiene, or style. It can be an important factor in improving their health. Here are examples of why you should consider having your pet groomed regularly.
Ear infections
Ear infections can be common in many pets. Signs may include head shaking and scratching the ears. But it may surprise you how many of your pets may have an ear infection and you don’t even know it. Since most groomers clean out the ears as part of their service, they can detect early signs of ear infections. Also grooming your pet can help reduce ear infections. There are pets that can have a fair amount of hair in their ears. Groomers will often pluck the ears to removes the them because they attract moisture. Moisture in the ears can increase the likelihood of yeast and bacteria infections.
Fleas
Sometimes fleas may not be as obvious in your pets. Grooming your pet can make finding fleas easy. With all the brushing, combing, and bathing, if there are fleas on your pet, there is a high likelihood your groomer will find them.
Skin allergies
If your pet has a thick coat of fur, it may be difficult to see their bare skin. Grooming your pet allows for a great view of what is going on with the pet’s skin. Any redness and irritation can be seen pretty easily.
Tumors
A thick coat of fur can also hide any skin tumors you may not know of. There is some massaging of the fur during grooming when your pets is lathered with shampoo. Therefore there is a high probability of your groomer finding any hidden skin tumors.
Anal glands
These glands are located around the rectum of your pet. In some dogs these can cause problems leading to scooting, licking, and anal gland abscesses. When your pet is groomed these glands are expressed which can decrease the likelihood of these issues,
Eyes
If your pet has a lot of facial fur, having your pet’s face trimmed can help with reducing the fur from irritating the eyes. Fur in the eyes can cause mild irritation to worse case scenario, ulcers in the eyes. So grooming your pet can help minimize this.
Cats and Hairballs
If you have a cat, they probably have had hairballs. Long-haired cats are even more prone to hair balls. Having your cat groomed can help reduce hairballs. Excessive fur can also contribute to constipation in cats. So having your long-haired cats brushed, and even sometimes the fur clipped can provide a great health benefit.
In conclusion
As you can see grooming your pet can provide great health benefits to your pet in addition to improving their appearance. Depending on what breed, and type of fur your pet has will determine how often your pet needs to be groomed.
Taking care of your pet is very important but it is something that can easily be neglected. Thank you for your advice.
It’s true! You groom them, and you can feel anything mysterious that might be growing on them!
Thanks a lot for the great post, i have a cat and I groom him almost every day, great thing that this helps improve his health.
Chad
http://www.mosaicslab.com
My cat grooms herself and is always nice and clean. The dog on the other hand, we bath every week. Doggies don’t stay fresh like kitties.
We started grooming our 17 year old bichon frise recently because he was getting quite aggressive with the groomers we were taking him to. He is an old and ornery guy these days and only has patience for grooming done by me and my husband. I can visibly see that he is less stressed out about it now that we’ve been grooming him ourselves and we can take our time giving him long breaks in between the grooming so he doesn’t get overwhelmed. Great post!
What a great and useful post to read. I don’t own any pets at the moment but I agree that grooming your pets will help them to be healthy.
It is so important to groom your pet so they feel better. Thank you for sharing these reasons to do it even more.
Sharing this post with my friends too. Very useful and informative.
Such a great and informative post. My pets are really important to me. So I always make sure that they are well-groomed every day.
I didn’t realize groomers did ears. That is a great way to help detect an infection early! We have a cat. We don’t get her groomed. When we move back to a house we will get a dog as well.
We have two dogs with really short fur, so we aren’t always the best at giving them regular baths because they hardly ever look dirty! This makes me realize it would be a good idea to get back in the routine of regular bath times for them to get some of the yuck off of their skin.
Grooming is so important! Taking our oldest to a groomer helped to minimize ear infections when he was younger!
great post, good to know what to do with your pet in these situations 🙂
We are very diligent about brushing our cats. It definitely makes a difference, even if it is just reducing the amount of hairballs they get.
I can see it’s time for me to take Peanut to be groomed. He was scratching his ears this am and I looked inside but couldn’t see anything. It never dawned on me he could have an ear infection.
We used to have a pet a year ago and we used to groom her similarly.Definitely grooming helps pet in many ways
This is such a useful post. My grandparents have 4 dogs and they’re always telling people about the anal gland point!
I have two cats, a dog, and a hamster. I’m definitely going to try all of these tips!
Great information! We have a husky and she needs to be groomed often. We want her to look pretty but it’s also great for her!
I don’t have any pets yet but this was an interesting read to learn about how pet owners can look after their pets and improve their health. Love it.