It Is Still Ninety Degrees and Your Dog Just Started Blowing Coat

Why is my dog shedding in September when it is still ninety degrees?

You vacuumed Tuesday. By Thursday there was a grey drift of undercoat along the baseboard again, and the thermometer on the porch still says ninety something.

You didn't miss anything. Coats don't run on temperature, they run on daylight. The days start shortening right after midsummer, and by early September your dog's body has read the calendar even though Dallas hasn't. Our summer runs from May into October, so the coat flips while the driveway is still hot. That gap is the whole reason this catches people out, year after year.

What is actually going on under the fur?

A double coat is two layers doing two jobs. The guard hair on top sheds water and blocks sun. The undercoat underneath is soft, dense and packed tight, and it's the layer that turns over. In spring it dumps the winter load. In autumn it dumps the light summer load to make room for a heavier one.

In a cool climate that autumn dump happens in dry air and the loose fur simply falls out. Here it happens in a warm, sticky September. Loose undercoat that can't fall out stays pressed against the skin instead. Add humidity, a swim, or a dog who lies on damp grass at six in the morning, and that trapped layer starts to pack down. Fluffy turns felted faster than anybody expects. If yours is already past that point, late summer matting in Dallas covers what happens next.

It also gets worse before it gets better. There's a stretch where it looks like the dog is coming apart. Black fur on the sofa, tumbleweeds under the dining table, a fresh grey haze on the car seat every time he gets in. That heavy stretch doesn't last all season. It's a short run of real volume and then a long slow tail that keeps going well after you thought it was done.

What matters is that the loose coat actually leaves the dog. Brushing at home gets some of it. A proper blow out gets a lot more. We've stood in driveways in Lake Highlands where the amount that comes off a shepherd in one appointment genuinely startles the owner, and they'd been brushing him every night.

What does a de-shed appointment actually do?

The wash matters less than the drying. Warm water and a good working of the coat loosen the dead undercoat at the skin, and then the force dryer pushes it out from the skin outward. That's the part a brush on the back porch never reaches.

Every bath includes the wash, the blow out, a nail trim, ear cleaning and a finishing spritz. On a heavy coat the blow out is where most of the hour goes. A typical appointment runs about an hour and many are done inside ninety minutes. Bath pricing starts at $75 for a small smooth coat and runs up to about $180 for an extra large double coat, which is where most September shedders land. A full groom, which adds the haircut, starts at $130.

Fair warning on the day. The van looks like a snow globe afterward, and your dog will keep dropping a little for a day or two, because we've loosened what was left in there. That's normal, and it's a fraction of what would otherwise have ended up on your rug.

How often should a double coat get done through the fall?

Double coats want a seasonal de-shed in spring and again in autumn, with regular baths in between. Smooth coats are easier, a bath every 8 to 12 weeks. Standard and curly coats sit at every 4 to 6 weeks, and those dogs aren't really shedding so much as growing.

The thing that goes wrong is drift. People stretch the gap over the summer because it's hot and nobody wants to think about fur in August. September is exactly when a stretched gap shows up.

What helps at home between visits?

Work on a dry coat, never a damp one. A damp undercoat is the last thing you want to be pushing around.

Use an undercoat rake rather than a slicker for the bulk of it, and go in sections. Lift the top coat with one hand and rake from the skin outward. The spots people miss are always the same: behind the ears, the ruff at the front of the chest, the pants at the back of the thighs, the armpits, and the base of the tail. Those are also the first places mats form, which is not a coincidence.

Ten minutes most days beats forty minutes on a Sunday. And if the rake stops sinking to the skin, stop pulling. That's packed undercoat, not tangles, and dragging on it hurts.

Should I just shave him down until it cools off?

For a double coat, no. The guard hair is doing real work in a Dallas summer, keeping sun off the skin and holding a layer of air against the body. Take it off and you've removed the shade, not the heat.

The undercoat also grows back faster than the guard hair, so a shaved double coat often comes back patchy and woolly, and worse at its job than it was before. On an older dog it sometimes never fully recovers.

The fix is getting the dead coat out, not taking the live coat off. If you've got a heavy shedder in Lakewood, that's the conversation to have with the groomer who comes out, before anybody reaches for clippers.

September is a strange month here. Your dog is shedding like it's autumn and panting like it's July, and both of those are true at the same time. Get the dead coat off him and the rest of the season is easier on everybody.