Fur real?

So, it wasn't just my eldest kid that was well overdue his grooming, our furry red friend's winter overcoat has been crying out to be 'ferminated' since Texas flipped it's season from winter to summer.

She's been fairing well in the more temperate 'spring' weather, and hasn't truly looked like a 'hot dog' until we reached the 90's (F) over the last week or so. But, it wasn't the heat that finally spurred this busy Momma into a brushing bonanza.

Only in the past fortnight has the prevalent pretty yellow flower clover, which was carpeting our front yard, yielded the sticker burrs it had been threatening all spring. Daddy has been on standby ready to weed-eat the irksome spiky balls as soon as they became a potential pet problem.

However, with our velcro doggy, it only took a few rolls in the hay with her toyboy bow-wow for her mass of hairs to become matted and clumped, and unfortunately we missed our optimum weed-eat window.

'hair of the dog...'

A few days ago, when we brought the dogs inside for their nighttime cuddles, our poor girl's ears were pinned back with dozens of burrs acting like grips. It was definitely a scissors job, and when I got stuck in un-sticking her, I soon discovered that she was tangled from head to toe in the offending burrs.

Time to get out the big gun. Our poor pooch isn't a big fan of the unforgiving Ferminator (that cunning comb pulls bags of dead hair from her coat) but she does love being brushed. It took over an hour of cutting and intermittent ferminating and soft brushing, before all her remaining hairs were free.

By the end of it all, she looked about 10lb lighter, and her (now pathetic looking) tail had taken a bit of a merciless scissoring. Her fox-brush tail has been matted since we first adopted her, and no amount of hard-core combing over the past four years has made an ounce of difference to its wiry waywardness.

I could ferminate that wagging appendage until the cows came home (if she would ever let me) and it would still remain a coarse tangled mess. So this time - no messing - I trimmed her tail feathers as close to the bone as I dared. Unfortunately, our poor lady now looks almost indecent (like someone pulled her pants down in public). Hopefully, she'll grow her modesty back in no time, and I'll be able keep the regrowth in better condition.  

The mountain of fur I got out of her was almost as big as she is! Hopefully, being free of all that hair, our 'hot dog' should be feeling as cool as a cat for the Texas summer......