The Mats You Cannot See Are Forming Right Now

Why do mats show up in September and not in August?

Run your hand down your dog's back and everything feels fine. Slide your fingers underneath, right down at the skin behind the elbow, and there's a firm little pad of fur that doesn't move.

That's a mat, and it's been building for weeks. Late summer is the quiet season for coats falling apart in Dallas. It's still in the nineties in September. The dog has been damp on and off since May, from the hose, the pool, the lake, the wet grass first thing. Meanwhile the autumn coat change has already started, because that runs on daylight rather than heat, and dead undercoat is loading in under the surface. Warm, damp and full of loose fur is the exact recipe.

Where do mats actually start?

Never in the middle of the back, where you brush. Always in the places that rub, bend, or stay damp.

Behind the ears, and under the ear leather where nobody looks. The armpits. The groin and the inside of the back legs. The base of the tail. Under a collar or a harness that's lived on the dog all summer. The pants on a doodle. The beard and the chin on anything with face furnishings, especially a dog who drinks like he's putting out a fire.

Every one of those is under something or between something. That's why a coat can pass the eye test and fail the finger test.

How do I check if the top looks fine?

Fingers, not eyes, and not a slicker brush. A slicker skims the top of the coat and tells you everything is lovely.

Part the hair down to the skin with your fingers, like a hairline, and look at what's actually there. Do it in six or eight places. Then move a section of skin gently with your hand. If the coat travels with the skin as one sheet instead of the hairs moving separately, it's matted. If a comb won't slide through from the skin outward, it's matted. How it looks from across the room doesn't come into it.

Why can't you just brush the mats out?

Sometimes we can, when there are a few and they're loose. Often we can't, and the honest answer is that trying would hurt.

A mat isn't a tangle sitting on top of the fur. It's hair that has wound in on itself and then tightened against the skin, and the skin comes with it. Underneath a big one the skin is usually pale, sometimes damp, sometimes already sore, because no air has reached it in weeks. Dragging a comb through that is minutes of real pain for a result that ends up worse than a clean clip. There's a fuller walk through the choices in my dog is matted, what now.

So the call is simple. If the mats can come out without hurting the dog, they come out. If they can't, the coat comes off short, underneath the matting, and we start clean.

What does a shave down actually look like?

Shorter than you're picturing. The blade has to get under the matting, and the matting sits at the skin, so there isn't much room to negotiate. A doodle who arrived looking like a teddy bear leaves looking like a different dog for a few weeks.

Skin that's been sealed under felt for a month gets air again, and the scratching usually settles within a few days. It isn't a punishment and it isn't a failure on your part. It's a reset, and the coat comes back.

The one thing worth saying plainly is that nobody can promise a length before they've had hands in the coat. Your groomer will tell you what's possible once the dog is on the table, not before.

How do I stay out of this next September?

Get on a rhythm and hold it through the hot months, because that's when people drift. Standard and curly coats want a bath every 4 to 6 weeks. Smooth coats are easy at every 8 to 12 weeks. Double coats want a seasonal de-shed in spring and autumn with baths in between, and the autumn one lands while it's still hot, which is the whole idea behind the September coat flip.

At home, comb rather than brush, and comb to the skin. Take the collar off when the dog's inside. After the lake or the pool, rinse properly and dry properly, not just a towel and a shrug. Check those six spots with your fingers once a week, which takes about as long as making coffee.

A full groom starts at $130 and runs up to about $210 for the biggest coats. Most of the doodles we see in Preston Hollow are on a four to six week loop by their second year, not because anybody talked them into it, but because they tried the longer gap once and didn't enjoy September.

If you find a mat today, it isn't an emergency and you haven't ruined anything. It just means the clock started a while back and you finally noticed. That's the good version of this.