Coat changing questions

[Christina]

Been a while since I checked in on DK but seeking advice from all you experts. Oakley is a 10 month ADL , non sheding, wavy coat, large mini who is going through "the change" I have every tool you can think of including the activet but have found the combs, racks and the magic coat mat comb wih teeth which cut mats out work best. I brush him everyday and as soon as I am done I seem to Dina another mat and back to the drawing board and brushing process. I have had him groomed every 8-10 weeks but thinking about getting him on a 6 week schedule to see if this helps. I also bathe him after doing detailed brushing about every week or two and use a 2-1 shampoo conditioner combo. Questions....

1. For those of you who have lived through "the change" , how long did this transition last. Hopeful this is not the new normal. I expected he would need to be brushed regularly but not for 30mins to and hour a day.

2. Any suggestions on how to keep on top of this besides what I mentioned above?

3. Have any of you found cutting the coat down in length help and if so what length? I have been having him cut using an E comb I beleive. Not big on shaving but finding a manageable length that keep mats under control and still looks like a doodle.

Thanks for any help you can provide.

[Bonnie and Kona]

Kona was clipped down to about 1 1/2 inches all over and it helped tremendously during the coat change. Another extremely helpful technique is line-brushing. It is a process by which you go through the coat first brushing then combing to get all the way to the skin. You can find descriptions here on DK or on Youtube. Once Kona was clipped short I was better able to stay on top of the mats so that he never had to be clipped so short again. Well, for the last year we have lived in Hawaii and now I keep his coat very short because he loves the beach.

[Nancy, Ned, Clancy, and Charlie]

Ned went through the coat change - or whatever you want to call extreme matting until he was over 2!  We brush/combed him daily gradually weaning down to 3 times a week.  Now at age 6 we can brush him every week or even 2 weeks, and sometimes we go almost the whole month with only minimal brushing.  He still mats but the difference now is that he has small mats (rather than the whole coat) that I can either comb or  slice them out.  We get him groomed every 4 - 6 weeks and that seems to be our salvation. If we are brush/combing him, it still takes 40 - 60 minutes and then we stop whether done or not.  We have always kept Ned fairly long, but we did shorten it some when he was seriously matting. I was just noticing today that Ned has gotten straighter over the years rather than curlier.

[Michele Kiss]

Christina - What length did you settle on cutting Oakley down to? We need to seriously rethink how long we're keeping Fenway :-(  But I'm unsure of what to tell the groomer when he try to go a bit shorter. I'm worried they'll do too much...