Quote:
Originally Posted by winnipugs
hand stripping any animal is cruel!!  imagine covering ur body in duct tape and tearing it off!! and no...your pet does not get used to it! good luck |
Hand stripping is NOT cruel. It is NOT painful. I have had Airedale Terriers now since the early 70's and I have always hand stripped them.
Right now I have one 4 year old male (he is my sixth Airedale) and I have hand stripped him since he was 5 months old. When he sees me getting out the grooming equipment he jumps up onto the grooming table right away. He loves to be groomed. Hand stripping will leave your dog with a healthy coat with no dead hair.
All hard coated terriers should be hand stripped. If you do not hand strip them their hair will grow out to around 3 inches long and then die. This length varies from dog to dog according to how hard their coat is to begin with. The same holds true for all three varieties of Schnauzers
Then when it reaches it's max length and you use a clipper on them, you are leaving the dead hair still in the skin. This results in the coat having a very dull muted color and being very soft. In the case of Airedales which are black and tan, the black will look greyish and the tan which should be a deep rich color will look very, very light.
I would suggest that you invest in a Mars Coat King, you can read about them here:
http://www.cherrybrook.com/blog/inde...Mars-Coat-King They are a great tool for coat maintenance. They effortlessly muck out all the dead hair and it IS painless to the dog.
Below are three pictures of Airedale Terriers. The first show a dog which was not hand stripped. The second shows a hand stripped example, note the nice deep rich color in the 2nd image and the last shows a group of Airedales. The one that was not hand stripped is very easy to spot.
