Everyone knows that dog care can become a handful. It’s not easy being a good friend to your pet, feeding them, playing with them, entertaining them and grooming them and keeping the dogs and fireworks away from each other, are amongst many other things. Being able to care for your pup is a marvel that deserves high praise. However, who says that it couldn’t be easier? Not us. We believe that many of you might be overlooking or missing a few critical or highly useful things that could help you to simplify dog care. Here are 6 of those tips.
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Make and keep to a schedule
Dogs need a routine more than you do. If you are able to create a routine and get the dog used to it, grooming and all related tasks become a lot easier. This way your dog is able to, in his or her mind, link certain timeframes with certain activities and make them inevitable. Besides, if there is a reward at the end, they’ll be more than glad to do these tasks and help you out.
Make use of the latest technology
If you were to do things manually and try to make everything work by yourself, it will be harder than when utilising technology, of course. You have a lot of gadgets and technical items that greatly reduce the difficulty of everyday dog grooming tasks. For starters, you have smart feeders which dispense dry food according to a predetermined schedule or your own choice.
Next up, you can get a smart leash that tracks and logs your activity level. Moreover, it’s worth to look at things like a collar with a GPS tracker (great for safety) and even a rechargeable pet nail grinder. The latter is much more precise and efficient than clippers and safer, too.
Don’t be afraid to visit grooming salons
It can also happen that at the moment, you just have too much personal or family matters to take care of, and cannot find enough time to properly groom a dog. Don’t leave it be for too long as a poorly groomed dog can be much more susceptible to parasites as well as health issues. This is why you shouldn’t hesitate for too long and book a session at a grooming salon if necessary. They don’t take too long and professionals, who work there, are very gentle and will take proper care of your pet. The money spent is well worth it and you can allocate your time to other, more important things.
With that being said, we would like to point out that you shouldn’t go all out and only do grooming at a salon. Try and find at least a single thing that you can do by yourself. It helps to build a bond with your dog and teaches you important skills.
Keep sessions short
At first, at least, try to make little time for a lot, but shorter grooming sessions. Maybe dedicate 20 minutes every day instead of doing stuff for two hours at the end of the day. It is beneficial for you, personally because people usually don’t have the luxury of long hours of spare time to groom their dogs. So, keeping that in mind, it is obvious that it’s much more reasonable to try and manage dog grooming and care in short sessions that are done frequently.
Reward your pet
This is crucial and is especially beneficial if you want to setup a schedule for grooming & care. After every longer session or part, give your pet a snack or a treat. This will form a mutually understanding habit and bond between you two. He or she will expect a treat after you grind their nails and thus, will be more obedient and likely to stay in place just like you ask them to. If the dog sees no motivation (or no treat) after the grooming procedure, they might be reluctant to follow your commands/requests.
Be ready to adapt to changes of the situation
Finally, you must be capable of adapting to a certain situation. Maybe there’s rain upcoming or there’s a thunderstorm outside and your pup seems anxious? Put off the grooming for a later date. And so on, and so forth. It’s important to be flexible and ready to react because we, humans are much more versatile and capable of that, when compared to our four-legged pets.
