Sometime within "4 years of veterinary medicine" you should have learned the difference between canine and human epidermis. Dogs have far fewer pain receptors in their epidermis than humans do. Much like a canines olfactory senses are 200 times more acute than our own, so it is with a humans skin sensitivity compared to a dogs. It is far more acute for us. Comparing hand stripping a dog to "waxing or plucking hair from a human" is a terrible analogy. It is just plain wrong.
Have you ever taken your dog to the vet for an inoculation and the vet grabs a bunch of skin on the dog's back and slides the needle in and the dog does not even blink? That is because they do not have the same volume of pain receptors in their epidermis as a human; in fact they have very few.
Also, sometime within "20 years of dog grooming" you should have learned that when a dog's hair grows it grows in bundles. When a human hair develops it grows as a solitary hair and continues to grow unlike dog's hair which grows in cycles. When dog hair reaches a certain length determined by the individual dog's genetic makeup, it stops growing, then dies. That's when shedding begins.
Hard coated terriers and Schnauzers do not shed. Like all dogs their hair grows to a certain length and dies, The difference is that with hard coated terriers and Schnauzers if you clip them when their coat is blown (dead hair) you leave all of the dead hair in the epidermis.
I apologize if I seem angry, I am not. It is just that I am very passionate about my animals and it upsets me when someone disseminates information that is just plain wrong regarding grooming.
Hand stripping a dog puts no more stress on the animal than brushing it or combing it and far less than brushing or combing a dog that is matted.
Again, I have been hand stripping Airedales for many, many years and I would invite anybody who doubts what I say regarding the level of stress or discomfort that it puts on a dog to come and watch me groom my 4 year old male. Again, when he knows it's time to be groomed he will jump up on the table on his own and stay there without a noose for the entire session which is usually just under 2 hours. It is not painful, mean or cruel and you can say it is all you want but it does not make it so. Every Airedale I have ever owned looked forward to the grooming because it was a pleasurable experience done by a groomer (me
) that knew what he was doing.