Terms of the Trade
Hand-Stripping:
The overarching term for the dog grooming process of pulling out long, dead, topcoat hairs so new hair grows in. The hairs are pulled, without breaking, from the follicle, using special tools including textured stones or blades, stripping knives, and fingers.
Hand-stripping is performed on breeds specifically bred for the thick, coarse, hairs to release easily and without pain from the skin. Such breeds include Schnauzers, many long & short legged terriers, and numerous sporting, field, and herding breeds like wire-haired dachshunds, wire-haired pointers, Spinoni Italiani, and even some toy breeds like Brussels Griffon & Affenpinscher.
Not all dogs of the representative breeds have coats suitable for hand-stripping — fine, softer coats with signs of “fluffiness” especially when short, are not good candidates for hand-stripping and should be maintained by clippering. Once clippered, it is difficult to impossible to return to hand-stripping so socialization generally begins in early puppyhood so that regular hand-stripping maintenance is achieved by one year to 18 months of age, in most breeds.
Finger Plucking:
The process of hand-stripping without tools, using just your thumb and forefinger to pull a small number of hairs at a time. Often used for precision work, like on heads and faces, and for socialization to the process, in rare cases a coat is so exceptionally easy to pull that the whole dog can be stripped in this way.
Jacket:
The collective term for the hand-stripped body hair, reflective of its purpose. A good jacket, of appropriately harsh, coarse or wiry hair, easily repels rain and snow and protects the dog from wind and cold while working outside during the winter.
“Blown” Coat:
When the top-coat hairs have grown out and become long and/or wispy, the jacket is considered “blown.” Coarser, more correct, coats typically grow out longer before they “blow,” which provides more and longer protection against the winter elements. Softer or finer coats “blow” relatively quickly, which makes their upkeep requirements and level of difficulty much higher.
When the coat first reaches the “blown” stage, it may be its easiest to pull but the longer it grows, it becomes more prone to damage by accidentally cutting or breaking the coat. Care must be taken to reduce this damage, or to deliberately plan for addressing the damage in a future session. Mentoring or instruction is important to get through this stage without setting yourself back with the complication of recognizing and repairing a coat that was blown and then broken.
Section Stripping:
Hair on different parts of the dog grow in at different rates, so stripping the whole dog at one time may give inconsistent results. In response to this, Section-Stripping is a timing technique used to get a dog, particularly a Schnauzer, into a coat of consistent length all over.
Rotating vs Rolling the Coat:
These two terms are often used interchangeably though some people regard them separately. Both are techniques of working the coat on a regular, fairly frequent basis, to maintain a jacket of consistent length and appearance. Show dogs are commonly maintained in this way.
Rotating the coat comes from the idea of building distinctive layers of different lengths into the jacket so that every 3-5 weeks, depending on the dog, the top layer that is becoming shaggy or “blown” can be pulled off to reveal a consistent, tight, jacket underneath. The layers are maintained by only working the coat at intervals. Most dogs maintained this way have 2-3 layers growing in at any given time.
Rolling the coat is typically a technique of working the jacket every few days to every week or two by pulling only the longest hairs off all over. This is accomplished by gently pinching the skin so that the hairs stand up, revealing the long ones needing to be pulled. By “rolling” that skin between your fingers, all over the jacket, you reveal all of the long hairs that need to be pulled off.
Stripping Knife:
A specialized, hand-held tool with metal teeth from coarsely to finely spaced which are used to grip the hair to make it easier to pull, especially if the coat is “blown” or there is a lot of coat to remove. The name is a little misleading, because though it is roughly knife-shaped, the tool should never be used to cut the hair, as that causes damage that can be difficult to repair. It’s sometimes considered a more advanced tool for this reason and an effort should always be made to “dull” new stripping knives, to reduce the tendency to cut the hair.
Stripping Stone:
A relatively new type of tool for hand-stripping, a hand-held stone or textured blade is an excellent tool for beginners. Because it has no sharp surfaces, it is very difficult to accidentally damage the coat by cutting it while you are learning hand-stripping techniques.
Raking:
The process of “de-bulking,” or to begin building layers into a “blown” coat, using a bladed rake specifically for this purpose. Raking does cut some of the coat, so care must be taken to minimize this, both through deliberately dulling the blades of the tool, and by using a slow and gentle technique. Never rake quickly or in a choppy manner, only and always smoothly and gently. Generally, raking should not be done on a show coat, except by an expert who knows exactly why and to what end they are doing it.
Carding:
The process of removing undercoat from a short jacket with a specialized knife or very fine-toothed rake to make it lay flatter against the skin.
