The Right Grooming Tools: Part Two, The Rake

Pets with long, thick coats need a rake.
Rakes thin your pet’s hair. Rakes are not like brushes—brushes are meant to touch skin, but rakes should never touch skin. Rakes are tough metal tools that remove tons of hair rapidly. Rakes are ideal for grooming overgrown, neglected coats or the coats of dogs with longer masses of hair: Golden Retrievers, Chow Chows, Shetland Sheepdogs, Norwegian Elkhounds, Siberian Huskies, Alaskan Malamutes, American Eskimo Dogs, etc.

Rakes tend to remove more of the undercoat and less of the top coat guard hairs. They are ineffective when there is no undercoat or the coat is short so they are not a tool for grooming Boxers, Labrador Retrievers, Greyhounds, Whippets, Weimaraners, etc.

Rakes that are the most useful are made of stainless steel and do not rust. They have easily-gripped handles; some handles, like those of the Furminator, are rubber. Rakes have rounded tips to protect the pet from the cutting blades, but they are not meant to be used next to the skin.

There are two common types of rakes: those with sharp, cutting blades such as the Oster Rake, and those with blades that grab and strip hair without cutting, such as the Furminator. The Furminator removes less hair than the Oster rake and can be safer for a novice user because it is less likely to strip out more hair than intended. The Oster rake does such an excellent job of cutting hair that it is possible to over groom a pet without realizing what’s happening—at least initially. Both the Furminator and Oster rakes can cut skin if used inappropriately, but both are easy to use in the correct fashion: With a rake, don’t touch your pet’s skin, just pull through the hair.

Rakes make a dramatic difference in the thickness of the coat very quickly and pets shed less because they have less hair. With a thinner coat, it is easier to find skin infections, wounds, and lumps on pets. Pets that have been “deshedded” with a rake are cooler in the summer, dry more quickly after bathing, and are easier to brush.

Rakes are the true “power tools” of the grooming salon.