Labranard

We recently picked up a large FURminator tool to try out on Roxie. She’s started her yearly super-shed (she tends to shed all year long) and instead of picking out clumps of fur by hand, we thought that the FURminator might be useful.

Roxie is a rather large St. Bernard Labrador mix breed and has a relatively short coat. Last spring we had her shaved as we didn’t want to deal with all of the fur throughout the house. We are hoping that we will be able to use the FURminator to better control when she loses her fur. So far we have been very impressed by the amount of fur that the FURMinator removes. It really does work like they show on their website.

The instructions tell you to use the tool somewhere that allows you to control the fur that is removed. We opted to use the FURminator on Roxie on our deck outside. That was a decent enough idea except that we kept getting fur in our face because of the wind. At the same time, I don’t think I’d want to have all of that short fur floating through the house.

The FURminator site recommends 10-20 minutes of use once a week. I spent about 30 minutes the first day and about 15 minutes a week later, both times I removed a substantial amount of fur from Roxie. So far so good.

The only real downside of the FURminator is the cost. At $70 CAD, that is almost the same price as us having Roxie shaved and washed (you tend to pay by the pound around here once the dog is over 75lbs) . I guess the only other downside is the amount of time it takes to keep the shedding under control. That’s not really a downside though as this is the first brush-like tool I’ve ever used on Roxie where she actually seems to enjoy it. I didn’t have to chase her or keep her trapped in a corner to use the FURminator on her. I’ll just have to add the FURminator to our Saturday morning routine.