Tibetan Terrier

Height 35.6- 40.6cm's Weight 8- 14 kg

Pippa Before	Pippa After
Pippa's owners were struggling to maintain her long coat & thought she would look better with the hair removed from her eyes. I trimmed her coat to a more manageable length and cleared her eyes.

The Tibetan Terrier was originally bred by nomadic tribes as a herding dog and also to retrieve articles from steep mountain passes. The long double coat is very high maintenance and does not moult. If you are not careful it can turn overnight into a very matted coat this is especially true when the puppy coat changes into an adult coat. One of the worse things you can do to your Tibetans coat is to wash without brushing first, if you repeatedly wash a muddy Tibetan thinking you are getting all the mud and dirt out you will end up with a felted matted coat underneath. The best thing to do wether you like it or not is to leave it to dry then brush the coat and brush out any mud and dirt prior to bathing. The breed standard is to leave the head hair long and natural covering the eyes but for practicality the pet Tibetan it is often trimmed to clear the face and eyes. The coat can be left long or it can be cut to varying lengths depending on client preference.

Something else you can do to get your Tibetan used to being handled is to play with their feet, keep handling them and sticking your fingers in thier pads. Tibetans have very hairy paws that need the hair trimming around and under the pads or great clumps of mud and hair will lodge inside.

The Tibetans that I groom come to me every 6 to 8 weeks and I usually clip them. The ones that have longer coats come every 4 to 6 weeks because the undercoat of a Tibetan is like wool and has microscopic barbs which lock the hair into mats and they get tighter as the coat dries just like an angora wool jumper so the longer the coat what goes on underneath makes it really hard to maintain.