and excessive grooming”.  This guide is not meant to encourage the presentation of an overly groomed dog, but it is intended as a basic outline on how to trim.  Therefore, depending on the amount of coat you dog has, its texture and how quickly the coat replenishes itself, you may use this outline in whatever way it applies to your individual dog.

 

Besides a good comb and brush, there are two basic tools that are useful.  The first should be a medium to fine toothed terrier stripping knife, used primarily for taking down top coat (i.e. Gately, McKnyfe, Pearson or Twinco).  The second is a fine toothed rate for removing unwanted undercoat (Hauptner Real is the brand I’m most familiar with).  A good time to begin working you god’s coat is when it is blown.  It will look unkempt and scraggly and life up in strange directions instead of lying flat.  At the same time, the furnishing will usually look limp rather than standoffish and sometimes the beard and eyebrows appear bleached out.  Now is the time to take the entire body coat down from the head to the tail, including the hindquarters, leaving only the eyebrows, beard, chest and leg furnishings.

 

Hold the stripping tool in your palm; grab a small amount of hair between your thumb and the blade of the knife.  Pull the hair out in a quick, straight motion in the direction it grows.  At the same time, grab the dog’s skin above the area you are working in order to give yourself some traction.  Proper stripping will never hurt a wirehaired coat; it will encourage better growth and correct texture.  If our dogs were frequently running in heavy cover, this job would be done naturally.  At first you may find trimming to be difficult.  Don’t hesitate to spread the work out over several days.

 

Instinctive Hunting Companions

A Grooming Primer

For the German Wirehaired Pointer

 

The wirehaired coat on a GWP is perhaps the breed’s most important distinctive feature.  The dogs were originally bred to be all purpose hunting companions, finding fur and feather on varied terrain and retrieving in water and on land.  The top coat should be harsh and flay lying, weather resistant and to some extent, water repellent.  A GWP coat is often confused with a terrier coat.  The nature of our dogs’ coats is different from hat of a broken-coated terrier (i.e. Airedale, Welsh, and Lakeland).  The softer undercoat changes with the seasons becoming dense in the cooler fall and winter months and shedding out or thinning during the spring and summer.  Terriers ordinarily do not shed out their undercoats.  A correct GWP coat doesn’t curl or open up after a day in the water, the way a terrier coat might.  While the coat of a GWP might have as harsh or tight of a jacket as a terrier, it also should not have the maintenance of a terrier coat.  The head coat should be naturally close fitting, while the coat around the shoulders and over the croup tends to be slightly thicker than the rest of the body coat.  Furnishings should be of moderate length and wiry enough to protect sensitive areas from sharp branches, thorns and burrs.  A short, smooth coat is not protective and a soft woolly coat and profuse furnishings only counteract their originally purpose by attracting dirt and debris.  A correct GWP coat should be functional and low maintenance.

 

The GWP breed standard places great emphasis on coat.  It states, “A dog must have a correct coat to be of correct type.”  As breeders, we strive to product the ideal coat.  In reality, we know that this very important quality can be inconsistent.  The standard also places a severe penalty on “extreme

By Judy Cheshire