West Highland Terrier's: How to groom at home during quarantine

April 6, 2020

The West Highland White Terrier

A West Highland White Terrier, or "Westie", is a small but sturdy dog in the terrier group that used to be used to hunt. "Westie's" are a spunky, smart, confident and courageous breed with a double coat of coarse, thick pure white fur. Grooming, which includes brushing and clipping your Westie’s nails, is an integral part of keeping the West Highland White Terrier happy and healthy. -Pippa Elliott, MRCVS

We will be going into more detail on how to groom your Westie's coat at home!

Common Challenges

In general, Westies have a weatherproof double coat that is made up of a dense- short undercoat, and long top coat that can grow as long as two inches. Depending on how you groom it, a Westie might have a curly, coarse, or thick appearance.

Grooming Tips and Tricks

1. Regular Brushing

Usually, your pet’s skin secretes oils that keep it moistened. As such, veterinaries recommend that you groom your Westie at least three times a week to spread the oils evenly.

Besides spreading the oils evenly, regular grooming using the best brush for a Westie also encourages blood flow to the skin, thus promoting healthy hair growth.

Using the slicker brush, brush the furnishings going against the grain or lay of the coat.
If you come across any matts in the coat, use your dematting tool to gently remove rolling your wrist when you feel resistance.
When the furnishings feel brushed out, run your steel comb thru to ensure you haven’t missed any tangles or small knots.
With the beard, use the same three tools. With the slicker, brush through the head and face. If you find any matts or bits of food or other foreign objects use the de-matting comb to remove. Finally use the steel comb to ensure the head is fully brushed out. Be as gentle as possible to make it a more pleasant experience.

Tools:

	Q Double Sided Mini Comb $5.99 Purchase from Ren's Pets HERE
	Bass Alloy Pin Slicker Brush Soft - Mini $18.99 Purchase from Ren's Pets HERE
	Mars Coat King, Extra Fine, 20 Blades $49.99 Purchase from Ren's Pets HERE
	Q Matt Comb 9 Blade $10.99 Purchase from Ren's Pets HERE

2. Dry Clean Your Furry Friend Occasionally

Occasional dry cleaning using either powdered chalk or cornstarch is recommended to eliminate excess oil from your Westie’s coat. When dry-cleaning your Westie, distribute the chalk powder or cornstarch evenly on the dog’s skin, leave it for 15 minutes, and brush it out using the appropriate Westie brush.

3. Only bathe your Westie when necessary

Since regular bathing can dry your Westie’s coat, it would be a wise idea to only bathe it when needed. Most people prefer bathing it thrice a year. However, the frequency may vary depending on the pet’s habits and environment.

When cleaning the dog, use purified water and shampoo that is recommended for Westie's. This is because un-purified water may contain chemicals that can stain your dog’s snow white coat while some shampoos can dry its skin.

Need an emergency bathing kit? We are now offering a Emergency at home bathing kit!

4. Clean your Westie's ears

Before you start, check to make sure your dog actually needs cleaning. Over-cleaning your dog’s ears can lead to infection and irritation, so familiarize yourself with what a healthy, clean ear looks like (pink, odorless, and not dirty or inflamed) and smells like (not yeasty or stinky), and clean it only when you notice a change.

To clean your dog’s ears without causing harm, you want to start on the outside and work your way in — but only until you start to feel resistance. If you try to push further in, you can damage your dog’s ear, so err on the side of caution. Wet a cotton pad with HolliePaws Natural Ear Cleaner and wipe the part of the ear that you can easily see, the outer flap. Then wet a new cotton ball to clean the inner ear. Always use a new cotton pads on each ear, then Ideally, you want to do this about once a week.

HolliePaws

Natural Ear Cleaner

$5.00

Available on www.HolliePaws.com for curb-side pickup!

5. Trim your Westie's nails

In our next blog post we will be discussing how to properly trim your dogs nails please stay tuned!

6. How to tidy up your Westie's face

We have included a video we found on Youtube, please ignore any parts that include clippers and just use scissors!

Click HERE to view video

Thank you to: BARKSPACE, wikiHOW, AKC, Cesarsway,

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