Short back and sides?
How often should I have my spaniels clipped each year to help prevent them picking up grass seeds? Or to put it another way, do their feet and ears need to be kept clipped as short as possible at all times – winter as well as summer?
Neil says:
I do hate to body-swerve questions but I am hardly Vidal Sassoon! My thoughts are that this is quite an individual thing. I see a great many spaniels with impossibly long hair on their ear flaps and feet and they don’t seem to have a problem. Others get tangled up in everything.
Half the world thinks the hair protects the skin, while the other thinks it a magnet for brambles, briar, grime and grit. It seems to me that that the formation of interdigital cysts, those annoying wee lumps between the toes, is more a problem amongst certain strains rather than being simply down to hair length.
Personally, I would go short in the summer with coat length in winter being decided by the type of ground and cover where your dog works. As for myself, I find the seasons have little effect on my style…