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Grooming your doodle can be a challenging task if you don’t have the proper tools to work with. We learned the hard way that if you don’t purchase good tools from the beginning, you’ll be wishing you had.
As the saying goes…
Buy nice or buy twice
We have gone through lots of products over the years of caring for our Goldendoodle. She requires regular grooming and that includes cutting her hair, brushing her hair, bathing her, keeping her toenails clipped, cleaning her ears to avoid ear infections and brushing her teeth regularly.
Hair Clippers
It took us a while to figure out the best clippers to use for cutting our Goldendoodle’s hair. Her hair is very fine and the cheap ones we started out using were not very good for the job.
We began by using a cheap $20 product that we bought at our local Wal-Mart. However, those bogged down and just weren’t strong enough to cut her hair. By the time we were finished with her first haircut, we knew we had to do something different.
We researched thoroughly and finally landed on a pair that we loved and have been using ever since.
The Andis Ultra Edge clippers is our pick for the top clippers for cutting through the hair type for Poodles and Poodle mixes.
What we like about the Andis Ultra Edge Clipper
- It’s sharp and cuts through our dog’s coat like a hot knife through butter.
- It’s quieter than the cheap one that we were using before.
- It has easy attach guards that can be easily removed or changed while using it.
- It’s high quality and will last for many years. Ours was purchased in 2008 and is still going strong in 2019.
- Long cord – 14 feet of cord allows freedom to move around without running out of cord.
What we don’t like
- It gets hot and you have to stop often to let it cool. This is fine since we use this time to do scissor work.
The Andis Ultra Edge has gotten us through many haircuts. We generally do 3 – 4 short haircuts per year so we have gone through about 45 haircuts during our dogs life so far.
If you add up the costs of what a groomer would charge during this time and this many haircuts, we have saved lots of money by doing it ourselves. I wouldn’t want to use any other clipper than this one.
Hair Clipper Guards
In addition to the Andis Ultra Edge, we also use guards in order to cut our dog’s hair to a certain length. Guards are necessary unless you are shaving your dog completely.
The hair of a doodle can often make a guard difficult to use so we recommend getting a skip-tooth guard. These guards have less teeth on the guard part allowing you to move through the dog’s hair better.
We use a 6.3mm skip tooth guard.
We initially tried to use a standard guard but it was too difficult to get through our dog’s hair. It would just tangle up and pull her hair while we were trying to use it.
The skip-tooth version gets through her hair much better and does so without pulling hair or making her uncomfortable in the process.
Toenail Clipping
When clipping toenails, we rely on a basic clipper and have found this to be the best option. It does take a little practice in order to not cut them too short, but once you get the hang of it, it’s a piece of cake.
You may want to have your vet or groomer show you how to do it before you try it yourself.
Click here for the basic trimmer we use
There are other more advanced options but our dog doesn’t do well with things that make noises so we have always stuck to the basic ones.
Ear Cleaning
Ear cleaning is a chore that we often have to do. Dogs with long ears tend to have ear infections more often than dogs with shorter ears.
Our mini Goldendoodle often gets a smell in her ears and she will start shaking her head more often and scratching. When she does this, we know it’s time to break out the ear cleaning gear.
We have found the best results with the Zymox ear cleaner with enzymes. We squirt the liquid in her ears and then massage it around before wiping inside her ears with cotton balls. It usually always takes care of it.
Combs & Brushes
Our Goldendoodle doesn’t require a lot of brushing but we often do it to avoid matting or tangles. We haven’t found a great solution for this but the closest we have come is the
in combination with the
Hertzko Self Cleaning Slicker Brush
These two work well together even though our dog hates it no matter what we use on her. She runs and hides each time we open the cabinet where we keep our grooming gear.
She’d rather avoid any type of grooming but it has to be done and the products mentioned above have gotten us through many years of grooming chores.
Teeth Care
Caring for your dog’s teeth is an often overlooked part of raising a healthy dog. The health of your dog’s teeth is very important for their overall health.
Without healthy teeth, your dog could develop the most obvious issues of bad breath, painful teeth and gums and even tooth loss. However, what may not be so obvious is the damage that could possibly be done to the liver, kidneys and even the heart.
We have always treated our dog’s teeth as we do our own. We brush her teeth on a regular basis and even scrape any small tarter buildup off before it gets out of control.
Our dog has never had a professional dental cleaning and the last visit to the vet revealed that she doesn’t need one. He said her teeth may be the best he’s ever seen, especially considering she has never had a professional cleaning.
We credit this to our strong commitment to keeping her teeth healthy ourselves.
Toothbrush
We began by using one of those brushes that attach to the end of your finger, allowing you to reach inside the dog’s mouth to work. However, we soon realized that this didn’t work very well for our dog and left a lot of areas untouched as we weren’t able to reach them.
The brush we finally settled on is the 3 sided brush that looks much like a human toothbrush except it has bristles coming from all angles. This allows you to brush your dog’s teeth with less effort while the brush cleans nearly every part of the teeth.
Using a toothbrush like this works the best for us.
The best we have found is the Kissable 3-sided Toothbrush.
However, the Kissable toothbrush isn’t available any longer so we have been using the EZ Dog 3-Sided Toothbrush. It’s cheap and gets the job done.
Toothpaste
The toothpaste we love is the Pura Naturals Pet – Organic Canine Dental Gel. This toothpaste contains all-natural, organic ingredients and leaves our dog’s breath smelling wonderful!
It’s also chemical and dye free and is also cruelty free. It’s made in the USA and is a high quality product that we are happy to use on our dog. She loves the taste of it and one tube lasts a long time.
We have also used the Kissable brand toothpaste along with their 3-sided toothbrush and it has also worked great for us. However, the Kissable brand is often hard to find so we moved on to a brand we knew we could get.
Bathing
It can be a real chore to bathe a Goldendoodle or a Labradoodle especially if they are standard sized. With our dog, since she is a smaller dog, it isn’t so bad but it is still a chore that she doesn’t like and neither do we.
However, it has to be done from time to time. We have found a few products that help along the way.
Shampoo
We haven’t settled on one specific brand of shampoo but we always lean towards an all-natural product that only contains natural ingredients without added chemicals, dyes or Parabens.
The one we recommend is Pro Pet Works All Natural Oatmeal Dog Shampoo + Conditioner
Bath Brush
We often use a bath brush when we give our dog a bath. These brushes help to detangle your dog’s hair and will also give them a little massage as you are bathing them.
This dog bath brush is a great option
Microfiber Dog Towels
Drying off your dog can take a while, especially if you have a doodle that has lots of curly hair. We usually dry our Goldendoodle off with a set of high absorbent microfiber dog towels the best we can and then let her air dry the rest of the way.
These microfiber towels work great!