Grooming Your Puli

Until your puppy is 8 to 10 months old, you will have no grooming to do except regular bathing, cleaning eyes and ears and cutting toe nails. If you plan to let the coat cord, do not brush your puppy, even though some breeders say you should. I never brush puppies I am planning to cord. To do so "frizzes" the coat and loses the pointed ends that help you locate the cords.

When the undercoat begins to come in, your work will begin. The coat will begin to feel thick and matted to your fingers. Your fingers will be your most important tools. You will begin to feel natural separations in the coat where the hair seems to "clump" together close to the skin. This is the beginning of a cord. At this time, separate these soft clumps from each other. Just pull them apart with your fingers. Cords are organized mats that have tightened up with time.

Bathing will also help you cord your puppy. When you bathe the dog, do not rub the coat round and round, but squeeze it like you would a nice wool sweater. Don’t bathe the dog too often, because bathing dries the skin. I use a coat conditioner made by Bio-Groom called Vita Oil. Mix one or two tablespoons in a gallon of water and pour it over the dog after his bath. It is completely absorbed by the coat and skin and it is not greasy. It will help the coat be more manageable and less fly away. You can also keep it mixed at the same ratio in a spray bottle and spray it on the coat when you are working on separating the cords. A damp coat is easier to work with as the moisture helps you find the separations between the cords. Another product that is great on coats is Uni-Care. This is a human product and is available through K-Mart stores. It can be mixed with water and sprayed on the coat as you work on it or rubbed, full strength, in to the cords and skin.

You will have several months to really work on your puli puppy. You will not have to do it every day unless you would like to work on a small part of the coat every day. In the beginning you will think you are getting nowhere, as the coat will appear to be going right back together where you just separated it. Don’t panic! This is where patience pays off. Just persevere. You may want to wet it down occasionally with a spray bottle filled with one of the mixtures mentioned above and pull it apart again. This process will be repeated over a period of time. Each time the cords will be easier to find until the day comes when you will realize that the cords don’t seem to get lost again in the frizz and that you can actually begin to see them distinctly before your eyes. Don’t make it difficult. Remember, this takes time and patience more than anything else. A beautiful corded coat doesn’t happen over night.

When working with the cords in a young dog, don’t make them too small - bigger is better than smaller because you can always separate them later if they are too big. They will tighten up with age and bathing and if they are too small to start with, you wind up with little "strings" that are fragile and may break off at the skin. A good size for a cord is about the size of a kindergarten pencil. 

The ends of the cords should be tapered with a few long strands of hair reaching out toward the ground. If the ends get balled up or "closed" the cord grows back into itself and makes the cord look stumpy on the ends. To prevent this from happening, I use a small slicker brush on the ends of the cords. Let me emphasize here that I do mean the ENDS only! Take the cord in one hand and lightly brush out the end with the slicker held in the other hand. DO NOT BRUSH the entire cord, only the clumped up end. Only do this if the cords get balled up on the ends. Otherwise, brushing is a NO-NO. If your puli suddenly has lots of clumped up cords, another remedy is to trim the end at an angle to make it tapered. You can then brush out this angled end to make it more natural looking and in a few days, you won’t even be able to tell it was cut.

There will occasionally be debris in your Puli’s coat. Most of it falls out or you can pick it out. When you bathe the dog, some of it comes out and some of it will get further down in the cords. It is important to remove debris that might become imbedded in the dog’s skin, such as nettles, stickers, briars, etc.

Once the coat has distinct cords, all you do is bathe the dog when needed and separate the cords while you are watching TV and need something to do with your hands.

Clean his ears by removing the hair as necessary and washing the ear canal with a solution you can buy from your vet made specifically for canine ears. You only need to do this when the ear looks dirty, inflamed or is smelly, but you should check the ears at least twice a month to catch any problems before they get away from you. If the dog is shaking his head a lot or scratching his ears, that should be a clue for you to check his ears. Also, clean the debris that collects at the inner corners of the eyes daily and trim his feet so that the hair does not grow over the toes, giving him the appearance of wearing clown shoes.

The best time to work on a puppy is after a play session, when he is tired and ready for a nap. Put him on the grooming table, pet him and soon he will be fast asleep. Then you can work on his coat without any argument. As he gets older, he will actually enjoy grooming time because he will like the attention. The key is making grooming enjoyable when he is young.

Of course, the coat keeps on growing and, if left alone, will eventually reach the ground. If you do not want a dog with that long coat, you can shorten it to any length you like. I usually cut down the coat on a dog that has finished its show career. Assuming that you have trained you dog to relax on the grooming table, begin by getting the dog to lie down on his side. Take the top row of cords, along the topline, and flip them up away from the dog’s body so that you have a "sheet" of cords. Next, cut the cords off about 4" or 5" from the body, depending on how much length you want to leave. Then, take the next row of cords running parallel to the part, flip them up, and cut them. As you cut each row, you should go back and trim each cord at a diagonal so that they aren’t blunt on the ends. This is time-consuming, but worth it to retain the cords you worked so hard to get. Continue working down the dog’s body from the part, one layer of cords at a time, and you will wind up with nicely layered cords of a length that you can live with. The leg cords will have to be done tapering the length down to the foot, with the cords getting shorter as you progress toward the foot. This length is easy to care for, easy to bathe and still presents the picture of a corded dog to the world.

This probably seems like a lot of work to a beginner, but it really isn’t. Most of it can be done is bits and spurts when you have time. You will find that feeling your dog’s coat for places that need attention will become part of your life - almost as natural as breathing.

If the coat gets away from you and gets really matted, call your breeder or a groomer experienced with corded coats before you do something drastic like cutting it off. The only coat that can’t be corrected is one that isn’t there!